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PLAIN TALES 








PLAIN TALES 

FROM 

THE HILLS. 


BY 

RUDYARD KIPLING 

9 4 


AUTHORIZED EDITION 



YORK 

UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY 

SUCCESSORS TO 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 

142 TO 150 ’VVOliTlt STREET 




Copyright, 1889, 

By John* W Lovell, 


Bequest 

Albert Adsit 01enio»e 
Aug. 24, 1038 
(Not available for oxebange) 


CONTENTS 


- Pages. 

Lispeth. 7 

Three and—an Extra. 14 

Thrown Away. 19 

Miss Youghal’s Sais. 30 

Yoked with an Unbeliever. 35 

False Dawn. 43 

The Rescle of Pluffles. 53 

Cupid’s Arrows. 60 

The Three Musketeers. 66 

His Chance of Life. 73 

Watches of the Night. 80 

The Other Man. 87 

Consequences. 92 

The Conversion of Aurelian McGoggin. 99 

The Taking of Lungtungpen. 105 

A Germ Destroyer. 112 

Kidnapper. 118 

The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly. 124 

In the House of Suddhoo. 131 

His Wedded Wife. 141 

The Broken-link Handicap. 148 

Beyond the Pale. 155 

In Error. 163 

A Bank Fraud. 168 

Tods’ Amendment. 176 

The Daughter of the Regiment. 183 





























VI 


CONTENTS. 


Pages. 

In the Pride of His Youth. 190 

Pig . 197 

The Rout of the White Hussars. 215 

The Bronckhorst Divorce Case. 217 

Venus Annodomini. 224 

The Bisara of Pooree. 230 

The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows. 237 

The Madness of Private Ortheris. 245 

The Story of Muhammad Din. 254 

On the Strength of a Likeness. 258 

Wressley on the Foreign Office. 265 

By Word of Mouth ..... 272 

To be Filed for Reference .278 















PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS. 


LISPETH. 

Look, you have cast out Love! What Gods are these 
You bid me please ? 

The Three in One, the One in Three ? Not so 1 
To my own Gods I go. 

It may be they shall give me greater case 

Than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities, 

The Cotrvert, 

She was the daughter of Sonoo, a Hill-man, and Jadeh 
his wife. One year their maize failed, and two bears 
spent the night in their only poppy-field just above the 
Sutlej Valley on the Kotgarh side; so, next season, they 
turned Christian, and brought their baby to the Mission 
to be baptized. The Kotgarh Chaplain christened her 
Elizabeth, and “ Lispeth ” is the Hill or pahari pronun¬ 
ciation. 

Later, cholera came into the Kotgarh Valley and carried 
off Sonoo and Jadeh, and Lispeth became half-servant, 
half-companion, to the wife of the then Chaplain of 
Kotgarh. This was after the reign of the Moravian mis¬ 
sionaries, but before Kotgarh had quite forgotten her title 
of “ Mistress of the Northern Hills.” 

Whether Christianity improved Lispeth, or whether the 
gods of her own people would have done as much for 
her under any circumstances, I do not know; but she 



8 


LIS PETIT. 


grew very lovely. When a Hill girl grows lovely, she is 
worth travelling fifty miles overbad ground to look upon. 
Lispeth had a Greek face—one of those faces people paint 
so often, and see so seldom. She was of a pale, ivory 
color and, for her race, extremely tall. Also, she pos¬ 
sessed eyes that were wonderful ; and, had she not been 
dressed in the abominable print-cloths affected by Mis¬ 
sions, you would, meeting her on the hill-side unexpect¬ 
edly, have thought her the original Diana of the Romans 
going out to slay. 

Lispeth took to Christianity readily, and did not aban¬ 
don it when she reached womanhood, as do some Hill 
girls. Her own people hated her because she had, they 
said, become a memsahib and washed herself daily; and 
the Chaplain's wife did not know what to do with her. 
Somehow, one cannot ask a stately goddess, five foot ten 
in her shoes, to clean plates and dishes. So she played 
with the Chaplain’s children and took classes in the Sunday 
School, and read all the books in the house, and grew 
more and more beautiful, like the Princesses in fairy 
tales. The Chaplain’s wife said that the girl ought to 
take service in Simla as a nurse or something “ genteel.” 
But Lispeth did not want to take service. She was very 
happy where she was. 

When travellers—there were not many in those years— 
came in to Kotgarh, Lispeth used to lock herself into her 
own room for fear they might take her away to Simla, or 
somewhere out into the unknown world. 

One day, a few months after she was seventeen years 
old, Lispeth went out for a walk. She did not walk in 
the manner of English ladies—a mile and a half out, 
and a ride back again. She covered between twenty and 
thirty miles in her little constitutionals, all about and 
about, between Kotgarh and Narkunda. This time she 


LIS PE m. 


9 

came back at full dusk, stepping down the break-neck 
descent into Kotgarh with something heavy in her arms. 
The Chaplain’s wife was dozing in the drawing-room 
when Lispeth came in breathing hard and very exhausted 
with her burden. Lispeth put it down on the sofa, and 
said simply :—“ This is my husband. I found him on the 
Bagi Road. He has hurt himself. We will nurse him, 
and when he is well, your husband shall marry him to 
me.” 

This was the first mention Lispeth had ever made of 
her matrimonial views, and the Chaplain’s wife shrieked 
with horror. However, the man on the sofa needed atten¬ 
tion first. He was a young Englishman, and his head 
had been cut to the bone by something jagged. Lispeth 
said she had found him down the khud, so she had 
brought him in. He was breathing queerly and was 
unconscious. 

He was put to bed and tended by the Chaplain, who 
knew something of medicine; and Lispeth waited outside 
the door in case she could be useful. She explained to 
the Chaplain that this was the man she meant to marry; 
and the Chaplain and his wife lectured her severely on 
the impropriety of her conduct. Lispeth listened quietly, 
and repeated her first proposition. It takes a great deal 
of Christianity to wipe out uncivilized Eastern instincts, 
such as falling in love at first sight. Lispeth, having 
found the man she worshipped, did not see why she 
should keep silent as to her choice. She had no intention 
of being sent away, either. She was going to nurse that 
Englishman until he was well enough to marry her. This 
was her little programme. 

After a fortnight of slight fever and inflammation, the 
Englishman recovered coherence and thanked the Chap¬ 
lain and his wife, and Lispeth—especially Lispeth—for 


10 


LISPETH. 


their kindness. He was a traveller in the East, he said-^ 
they never talked about globe-trotters’' in those days, 
when the P. & O. fleet was young and small—and had 
come from Dehra Dun to hunt for plants and butterflies 
among the Simla hills. No one at Simla, therefore, knew 
anything about him. He fancied he must have fallen 
over the cliff while stalking a fern on a rotten tree-trunk, 
and that his coolies must have stolen his baggage and 
fled. He thought he would go back to Simla when he 
was a little stronger. He desired no more mountaineer¬ 
ing. 

He made small haste to go away, and recovered his 
strength slowly. Lispeth objected to being advised 
either by the Chaplain or his wife; so the latter spoke 
to the Englishman, and told him how matters stood in 
Lispeth’s heart. He laughed a good deal, and said it 
was very pretty and romantic, a perfect idyl of the 
Himalayas ; but, as he was engaged to a girl at Home, 
he fancied that nothing would happen. Certainly he 
would behave with discretion. He did that. Still he 
found it very pleasant to talk to Lispeth, and walk with 
Lispeth, and say nice things to her, and call her pet 
names while he was getting strong enough to go away. 
It meant nothing at all to him, and everything in the 
world to Lispeth. She was very happy while the fort¬ 
night lasted, because she had found a man to love. 

Being a savage by birth, she took no trouble to hide 
her feelings, and the Englishman was amused. When 
he went away, Lispeth walked with him up the Hill 
as far as Narkunda, very troubled and very miserable. 
The Chaplain’s wife, being a good Christian and disliking 
anything in the shape of fuss or scandal—Lispeth was 
beyond her management entirely—had told the English¬ 
man to tell Lispeth that he was coming back to marry 


LISPETH. 


II 


her. “ She is but a child you know, and, I fear, at heart a 
heathen, ” said the Chaplain’s wife. So all the twelve miles 
up the hill the Englishman, with his arm around Lispeth’s 
waist, was assuring the girl that he would come back and 
marry her; and Lispeth made him promise over and over 
again. She wept on the Narkunda Ridge till he had passed 
out of sight along the Muttiani path. 

Then she dried her tears and went in to Kotgarh 
again, and said to the Chaplain’s wife: “ He will come 
back and marry me. He has gone to his own people to 
tell them so.” And the Chaplain’s wife soothed Lispeth 
and said : “He will come back.” At the end of two 
months, Lispeth grew impatient, and was told that the 
Englishman had gone over the seas to England. She 
knew where England was, because she had read little 
geography primers ; but, of course, she had no concep¬ 
tion of the nature of the sea, being a Hill girl. There 
was an old puzzle-map of the World in the house. Lispeth 
had played with it when she was a child. She unearthed 
it again, and put it together of evenings, and cried to her¬ 
self, and tried to imagine where her Englishman was. As 
she had no ideas of distance or steamboats, her notions 
were somewhat erroneous. It would not have made the 
least difference had she been perfectly correct; for the 
Englishman had no intention of coming back to marry a 
Hill girl. He forgot all about her by the time he was 
butterfly-hunting in Assam. He wrote a book on the 
East afterwards. Lispeth’s name did not appear. 

At the end of three months, Lispeth made daily 
pilgrimage to Narkunda to see if her Englishman was 
coming along the road. It gave her comfort, and the 
Chaplain’s wife finding her happier thought that she was 
getting over her “barbarous and most indelicate folly.” 
A little later the walks ceased to help Lisbeth and her 


12 


LIS PE TIT. 


temper grew very bad. The Chaplain s wife thought this 
a profitable time to let her know the real state of affairs— 
that the Englishman had only promised his love to keep 
her quiet—that he had never meant anything, and that it 
was “wrong and improperof Lispeth to think of mar¬ 
riage with an Englishman, who was of a superior clay, 
besides being promised in marriage to a girl of his own 
people. Lispeth said that all this was clearly impossible 
because he had said he loved her, and the Chaplain’s wife 
had, with her own lips, asserted that the Englishman was 
coming back. 

“ How can what he and you said be untrue.?” asked 
Lispeth. 

“ We said it as an excuse to keep you quiet, child,” said 
the Chaplain’s wife. 

“Then you have lied to me,” said Lispeth, “ you and 
he.?’’ 

The Chaplain’s wife bowed her head, and said nothing. 
Lispeth was silent, too, for a little time ; then she went 
out down the valley, and returned in the dress of a 
Hill girl—infamously dirty, but without the nose and 
ear rings. She had her hair braided into the long pig¬ 
tail, helped out with black thread, that Hill women 
wear. 

“ I am going back to my own people,” said she. “You 
have killed Lispeth. There is only left old Jadeh’s daugh¬ 
ter—the daughter of a pahari the servant of Tarka Devi. 
You are all liars, you English.” 

By the time that the Chaplain’s wife had recovered from 
the shock of the announcement that Lispeth had ’verted to 
her mother’s gods, the girl had gone ; and she never came 
back. 

She took to her own unclean people savagely, as if to 
make up the arrears of the life she had stepped out of; 


LISPETH, 


13 


and, in a little time, she married a wood-cutter who beat 
her, after the manner of paharis, and her beauty faded 
soon. 

“There is no law whereby you can account for the 
vagaries of the heathen,said the Chaplain’s wife, “ and 
I believe that Lispeth was always at heart an infidel.’ 
Seeing she had been taken into the Church of England at 
the mature age of five weeks, this statement does not do 
credit to the Chaplain’s wife. 

Lispeth was a very old woman when she died. She 
always had a perfect command of English, and when she 
was sufficiently drunk, could sometimes be induced to tell 
the story of her first love-affair. 

It was hard then to realize that the bleared, wrinkled 
creature, so like a wisp of charred rag, could ever have 
been “ Lispeth of the Kotgarh Mission.’' 


THREE AND - AN EXTRA. 




THREE AND-AN EXTRA, 


When halter and heel ropes are slipped, do not give chase with stick! 
but with, gram.” 

Punjabi Proverb. 


After marriage arrives a reaction, sometimes a big, 
sometimes a little one ; but it comes sooner or later, and 
must be tided over by both parties if they desire the rest 
of their lives to go with the current. 

In the case of the Cusack-Bremmils this reaction did 
not set in till the third year after the wedding. Bremmil 
was hard to hold at the best of times ; but he was a beau-- 
tiful husband until the baby died and Mrs. Bremmil wore 
black, and grew thin, and mourned as if the bottom of 
the Universe had fallen out. Perhaps Bremmil ought to 
have comforted her. He tried to do so, I think ; but the 
more he comforted the more Mrs. Bremmil grieved, and, 
consequently, the more uncomfortable Bremmil grew. 
The fact was that they both needed a tonic. And they 
got it. Mrs. Bremmil can afford to laugh now, but it was 
no laughing matter to her at the time. 

You see, Mrs. Hauksbee appeared on the horizon ; and 
where she existed was fair chance of trouble. At Simla 
her bye-name was the “ Stormy Petrel.” She had won 
that title five times to my own certain knowledge. She 
was a little, brown, thin, almost skinny, woman, with 
big, rolling, violet-blue eyes, and the sweetest manners 
in the world. You had only to mention her name at 
afternoon teas for every woman in the room to rise up, 
and call her—well—blessed. She was clever, witty, 


THROIVN AIVAV. 




THROWN AWAY. 

“ And some are sulky, while some will plunge 
ho ! Steady ! Stand stilly you ! ] 

Some you must gentle, and some you must lunge. 

\Thcre ! There ! JVho wants to kill you ? ] 

Some—there are losses in every trade— 

Will break their hearts ere bitted and made, 

Will fight like fiends as the rope cuts hard, 

And die dumb-mad in the breaking-yard.” 

Toolungala Stockyard Chorus. 

To rear a boy under what parents call the sheltered 
life system ” is, if the boy must go into the world and 
fend for himself, not wise. Unless he be one in a thou- 
and he has certainly to pass through many unneces¬ 
sary troubles ; and may, possibly, come to extreme grief 
simply from ignorance of the proper proportions of 
things. 

Let a puppy eat the soap in the bath-room or chew a 
newly-blacked boot. He chews and chuckles until, by 
and by, he finds out that blacking and Old Brown 
Windsor make him very sick ; so he argues that soap 
and boots are not wholesome. Any old dog about the 
house will soon show him the unwisdom of biting big 
dogs’ ears. Being young, he remembers and goes abroad, 
at six months, a well-mannered little beast with a chast¬ 
ened appetite. If he had been kept away from boots, 
and soap, and big dogs till he came to the trinity full- 
grown and with developed teeth, just consider how 
fearfully sick and thrashed he would be ! Apply that 
motion to the ‘‘sheltered life,” and see how it works. 
It does not sound pretty, but it is the better of two evils. 




20 


THROWN A WA F. 


There was a Boy once who had been brought up under 
the “sheltered life’’theory ; and the theory killed him 
dead. He stayed with his people all his days, from the 
hour he was born till the hour he went into Sandhurst 
nearly at the top of the list. He was beautifully taught 
in all that wins marks by a private tutor, and carried the 
extra weight of “never having given his parents an hour’s 
anxiety in his life.” What he learnt at Sandhurst beyond 
the regular routine is of no great consequence. He looked 
about him, and he found soap and blacking, so to speak, 
very good. He ate a little, and came out of Sandhurst 
not so high as he went in. Then there was an interval and 
a scene with his people, who expected much from him. 
Next a year of living “unspotted from the world ” in a 
third-rate depot battalion where all the juniors were 
children, and all the seniors old women ; and lastly he 
came out to India where he was cut off from the support 
of his parents, and had no one to fall back on in time of 
trouble except himself. 

Now India is a place beyoud all others where one 
must not take things too seriously—the mid-day sun 
always excepted. Too much work and too much en¬ 
ergy kill a man just as effectively as too much assorted 
vice or too much drink. Flirtation does not matter, 
because every one is being transferred and either you 
or she leave the Station, and never return. Good work 
does not matter, because a man is judged by his worst 
output and another man takes all the credit of his best N 
as a rule. Bad work does not matter, because other 
men do worse and incompetents hang on longer in India 
than anywhere else. Amusements do not matter, be- ^ 
cause you must repeat them as soon as you have accom- \ 


plished them once, and most amusements only mean 
trying to win another person’s money. Sickness does 




THROWN- AWAY. 


21 


not matter, because ifs all in the day’s work, and if 
you die another man takes over your place and your 
office in the eight hours between death and burial. 
Nothing matters except Home-furlough and acting al¬ 
lowances, and these only because they are scarce. This 
is a slack, kulcha country where all men work with im¬ 
perfect instruments ; and the wisest thing is to take no 
one and nothing in earnest, but to escape as soon as ever 
you can to some place where amusement is amusement 
and a reputation worth the having. 

But this Boy—the tale is as old as the Hills—came 
out, and took all things seriously. He was pretty and 
was petted. He took the pettings seriously, and fretted 
over women not worth saddling a pony to call upon. 
He found his new free life in India very good. It does 
look attractive in the beginning, from a Subaltern’s 
point of view—all ponies, partners, dancing, and so on. 
He tasted it as the puppy tastes the soap. Only he 
came late to the eating, with a grown set of teeth He 
had no sense of balance—^just like the puppy—and 
could not understand why he was not treated with the 
consideration he received under his father’s roof. This 
hurt his feelings. 

He quarrelled with other boys and, being sensitive to 
the marrow, remembered these quarrels, and they excited 
him. He found whist, and gymkhanas, and things of 
that kind (meant to amuse one after office) good ; 
but he took them seriously too, just as seriously as he 
took the “ head ” that followed after drink. He lost his 
money over whist and gymkhanas because they were 
new to him. 

He took his losses seriously, and wasted as much 
energy and interest over a two-goldmohur race for 
maiden ekka-^oniQS with their manes hogged, as if it had 


22 


TffROWJSr AIVAY. 


been the Derby. One half of this came from inex¬ 
perience—much as the puppy squabbles with the corner 
of the hearthrug—and the other half from the dizziness 
bred by stumbling out of his quiet life into the glare 
and excitement of a livelier one. No one told him 
about the soap and the blacking, because an average man 
takes it for granted that an average man is ordinarily 
careful in regard to them. It was pitiful to watch The 
Boy knocking himself to pieces, as an over-handled colt 
falls down and cuts himself when he gets away from 
the groom. 

This unbridled license in amusements not worth the 
trouble of breaking line for, much less rioting over, endured 
for six months—all through one cold weather—and then 
we thought that the heat and the knowledge of having 
lost his money and health and lamed his horses would 
sober The Boy down, and he would stand steady. In 
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred this would have hap¬ 
pened. You can see the principle working in any Indian 
Station. But this particular case fell through because The 
Boy was sensitive and took things seriously—as I may 
have said some seven times before. Of course, we couldn’t 
tell how his excesses struck him personally. They were 
nothing very heart-breaking or above the average. He 
might be crippled for life financially, and want a little 
nursing. Still the memory of his performances would 
wither away in one hot weather, and the shroff would help 
him to tide over the money-troubles. But he must have 
taken another view altogether and have believed himself 
ruined beyond redemption. His Colonel talked to him 
severely when the cold weather ended. That made him 
more wretched than ever ; and it was only an ordinary 
‘ ‘ Colonel’s wigging ” ! 

What follows is a curious instance of the fashion in 


THROWN AWAY. 


23 

which we are all linked together and made responsible for 
one another. The thing that kicked the beam in The 
Boy's mind was a remark that a woman made when he 
was talking to her. There is no use in repeating it, for it 
was only a cruel little sentence, rapped out before think¬ 
ing, that made him flush to the roots of his hair. He kept 
himself to himself for three days, and then put in for two 
days' leave to go shooting near a Canal Engineer's Rest 
House about thirty miles out. He got his leave, and that 
night at Mess was noisier and more offensive than ever. 
He said that he was “going to shoot big game," and left 
at half-past ten o’clock in an ekka. Partridge—which was 
the only thing a man could get near the Rest House—is 
not big game ; so every one laughed. 

Next morning one of the Majors came in from short 
leave, and heard that The Boy had gone out to shoot “ big 
game.” The Major had taken an interest in The Boy, and 
had, more than once, tried to check him in the cold 
weather. The Major put up his eyebrows when he heard 
of the expedition and went to The Boy's rooms, where he 
rummaged. 

Presently he came out and found me leaving cards on 
;he Mess. There was no one else in the ante-room. 

He said: “ The Boy has gone out shooting. Does a man 
shoot lefur with a revolver and a writing-case ! ” 

I said ; “ Nonsense, Major! " for I saw what was in hia 
mind. 

He said : “Nonsense or no nonsense. I'm going to the 
Canal now—at once. I don't feel easy." 

Then he thought for a minute, and said: “Can you 
lie ?" 

“ You know best,” I answered. “ It's my profession." 

“Very well,” said the Major; “you must come out 
with me now—at once—in an ekka to the Canal to shoot 


24 


THROWN AWAY. 


black-buck. Go and put on shikar-k\i — quick —and drive 
here with a gun. ” 

The Major was a masterful man ; and I knew that he 
would not give orders for nothing. So I obeyed, and on 
return found the Major packed up in an ekka —gun-cases 
and food slung below—all ready for a shooting-trip. 

He dismissed the driver and drove himself. We 
jogged along quietly while in the station ; but as soon 
as we got to the dusty road across the plains, he 
made that pony fly. A country-bred can do nearly 
anything at a pinch. We covered the thirty miles in 
under three hours, but the poor brute was nearly dead. 

Once I said:—“ What’s the blazing hurry. Major?” 

He said, quietly : “The Boy has been alone, by him¬ 
self for—one, two, five,—fourteen hours now ! I tell you, 
I don’t feel easy.” 

This uneasiness spread itself to me, and I helped to 
beat the pony. 

When we came to the Canal Engineer’s Rest House 
the Major called for The Boy’s servant ; but there was 
no answer. Then we went up to the house, calling for 
The Boy by name ; but there was no answer. 

“ Oh, he’s out shooting,” said I. 

Just then, I saw through one of the windows a little 
hurricane-lamp burning. This was at four in the after¬ 
noon. We both stopped dead in the verandah, holding 
our breath to catch every sound ; and we heard, inside 
the room, the “ hrr — hrr —irr” of a multitude of flies. 
The Major said nothing, but he took off his helmet 
and we entered very softly. 

The Boy was dead on the charpoy in the centre of 
the bare, lime-washed room. He had shot his head 
nearly to pieces with his revolver. The gun-cases were 
still strapped, so was the bedding, and on the table lay 


THROWN AWAY, 


25 

The Boy’s writing-case with photographs. He had 
gone away to die like a poisoned rat! 

The Major said to himself softly :—“ Poor Boy ! 
Poor, poor devil ! ” Then he turned away from the bed 
and said : — “I want your help in this business.” 

Knowing The Boy was dead by his own hand, I saw 
exactly what that help would be, so I passed over to 
the table, took a chair, lit a cheroot, and began to go 
through the writing-case; the Major looking over my 
shoulder and repeating to himself: “We came too 
late !—Like a rat in a hole !—Poor, poor devil I ” 

The Boy must have spent half the night in writing to 
his people, to his Colonel, and to a girl at Home ; and as 
soon as he had finished, must have shot himself, for he 
had been dead a long time when we came in. 

I read all that he had written, and passed over each 
sheet to the Major as I finished it. 

We saw from his accounts how very seriously he had 
taken everything. He wrote about “ disgrace which 
he was unable to bear ”—“ indelible shame”—“ criminal 
folly”—“wasted life,” and so on; besides a lot of 
private things to his Father and Mother much too 
sacred to put into print. The letter to the girl at 
Home was the most pitiful of all; and I choked as I 
read it. The Major made no attempt to keep dry¬ 
eyed. I respected him for that. He read and rocked 
himself to and fro, and simply cried like a woman with¬ 
out caring to hide it. The letters were so dreary and 
hopeless and touching. We forgot all about The Boy’s 
follies, and only thought of the poor Thing on the 
charpoy and the scrawled sheets in our hands. It was 
utterly impossible to let the letters go Home. They 
would have broken his Father’s heart and killed his 
Mother after killing her belief in her son. 


26 


THROIVJV AWAY, 


At last the Major dried his eyes openly, and said 

Nice sort of thing to spring on an English family I 
What shall we do ? ” 

I said, knowing what the Major had brought me out 
for :—** The Boy died of cholera. We were with him at 
the time. We can’t commit ourselves to half-measures. 
Come along.’’ 

Then began one of the most grimly comic scenes I 
have ever taken part in—the concoction of a big, written 
lie, bolstered with evidence, to soothe The Boy’s people 
at Home. I began the rough draft of the letter, the 
Major throwing in hints here and there while he gathered 
up all the stuff that The Boy had written and burnt it in 
the fire-place. It was a hot, still evening when we began, 
and the lamp burned very badly. In due course I got 
the draft to my satisfaction, setting forth how The Boy 
was the pattern of all virtues, beloved by his regiment, 
with every promise of a great career before him, and so 
on ; how we had helped him through the sickness—it 
was no time for little lies you will understand—and how 
he had died without pain. I choked while I was putting 
down these things and thinking of the poor people who 
would read them. Then I laughed at the grotesqueness 
of the affair, and the laughter mixed itself up with the 
choke—and the Major said that we both wanted drinks. 

I am afraid to say how much whiskey we drank before 
the letter was finished. It had not the least effect on us. 
Then we took off The Boy’s watch, locket, and rings. 

Lastly, the Major said ''We must send a lock of hair 
too. A woman values that.’’ 

But there were reasons why we could not find a lock 
fit to send. The Boy was black-haired, and so was the 
Major, luckily. I cut off a piece of the Major’s hair 
above the temple with a knife, and put it into the packet 


TffROtVN AWAY. 


27 


we were making. The laughing-fit and the chokes got 
hold of me again, and I had to stop. The Major was 
nearly as bad ; and we both knew that the worst part of 
the work was to come. 

We sealed up the packet, photographs, locket, seals, 
ring, letter, and lock of hair with The Boy’s sealing-wax 
and The Boy’s seal. 

Then the Major said :—“For God’s sake let’s get out¬ 
side—away from the room—and think ! ” 

We went outside, and walked on the banks of the 
Canal for an hour, eating and drinking what we had 
with us, until the moon rose. I know now exactly how 
a murderer feels. Finally, we forced ourselves back to 
the room with the lamp and the Other Thing in it, and 
began to take up the next piece of work. I am not 
going to write about this. It was too horrible. We 
burned the bedstead and dropped the ashes into the 
Canal; we took up the matting of the room and treated 
that in the same way. I went off to a village and bor¬ 
rowed two big hoes,—I did not want the villagers to 

help,—while the Major arranged-the other matters. 

It took us four hours’ hard work to make the grave. As 
we worked, we argued out whether it was right to say 
as much as we remembered of the Burial of the Dead. 
We compromised things by saying the Lord’s Prayer 
with a private unofficial prayer for the peace of the soul 
of The Boy. Then we filled in the grave and went into 
the verandah—not the house—to lie down to sleep. We 
were dead-tired. 

When we woke the Major said, wearily :—“We can’t 
go back till to-morrow. We must give him a decent time 
to die in. He died early ihts morning, remember. That 
seems more natural.” So the Major must have been 
lying awake all the time, thinking. 



2 $ 


TffROlVN AWAY. 


I said:—*‘Then why didn’t we bring the body back 
to cantonments ? ” 

The Major thought for a minute :—“ Because the 
people bolted when they heard of the cholera. And the 
ekka has gone ! ” 

That was strictly true. We had forgotten all about 
the ekka-^onj, and he had gone home. 

So, we were left there alone, all that stifling day, in 
the Canal Rest House, testing and re-testing our story 
of The Boy’s death to see if it was weak in any point. 
A native turned up in the afternoon, but we said that a 
Sahib was dead of cholera, and he ran away. As the 
dusk gathered, the Major told me all his fears about 
The Boy, and awful stories of suicide or nearly-carried- 
out suicide—tales that made one’s hair crisp. He said 
that he himself had once gone into the same Valley 
of the Shadow as The Boy, when he was young and 
new to the country ; so he understood how things 
iought together in The Boy’s poor jumbled head. He 
also said that youngsters, in their repentant moments, 
consider their sins much more serious and ineffaceable 
than they really are. We talked together all through 
the evening and rehearsed the story of the death of The 
Boy. As soon as the moon was up, and The Boy, theo¬ 
retically, just buried, we struck across country for the 
Station. We walked from eight till six o’clock in the 
morning ; but though we were dead-tired, we did not 
forget to go to The Boy’s rooms and put away his 
revolver with the proper amount of cartridges in the 
pouch. Also to set his writing-case on the table. We 
found the Colonel and reported the death, feeling more 
like murderers than ever. Then we went to bed and 
slept the clock round; for there was no more in us. 

The tale had credence as long as was necessary, foi 


THROWN AWAY. 


29 


every one forgot about The Boy before a fortnight was 
over. Many people, however, found time to say that 
the Major had behaved scandalously in not bringing in 
the body for a regimental funeral. The saddest thing of 
all was the letter from The Boy's mother to the Major 
and me—with big inky blisters all over the sheet. She 
wrote the sweetest possible things about our great kind¬ 
ness, and the obligation she would be under to us as 
long as she lived. 

All things considered, she Was under an obligation ; 
but not exactly as she meant. 


30 


M/SS YOUGHAVS SAIS. 


MISS YOUGHAUS SAIS. 

When Man and Woman are agreed, what can the Kazi do ? 

Mahomedan Proverb, 

# 

Some people say that there is no romance in India. 
Those people are wrong. Our lives hold quite as much 
romance as is good for us. Sometimes more. 

Strickland was in the Police, and people did not under¬ 
stand him ; so they said he was a doubtful sort of a man 
and passed by on the other side. Strickland had himself 
to thank for this. He held the extraordinary theory that 
a Policeman in India should try to know as much about 
the natives as the natives themselves. Now, in the whole 
of Upper India, there is only one man who can pass for 
Hindu or Mahommedan, chamar or faquir, as he pleases. 
He is feared and respected by the natives from the Ghor 
Kathri to the Jamma Musjid ; and he is supposed to have 
the gift of invisibility and executive control over many 
Devils. But what good has this done him with the Gov¬ 
ernment } None in the world. He has never got Simla 
for his charge; and his name is almost unknown to English¬ 
men. 

Strickland was foolish enough to take that man for his 
model ; and, following out his absurd theory, dabbled in 
unsavory places no respectable man would think of 
exploring—all among the native riff-raff. He educated 
himself in this peculiar way for seven years, and people 
could not appreciate it. He was perpetually “ going 
Fantee ” among natives, which, of course, no man with 


MISS YOUGHAVS SAIS. 


31 

any sense believes in. He was initiated into the Sat Bhai 
at Allahabad once, when he was on leave ; he knew the 
Lizard-Song of the Sansis, Hdlli-Hukk dance, which 

is a religious can-can of a startling kind. When a man 
knows who dance the Hdlli-Hukk^ and how, and when, 
and where, he knows something to be proud of. He has 
gone deeper than the skin. But Strickland was not proud, 
though he had helped once, at Jagadhri, at the Painting 
of the Death Bull, which no Englishman must even look 
upon ; had mastered the thieves’-patter of the chdngars ; 
had taken a Eusufzai horse-thief alone near Attock ; and 
had stood under the mtmbar-ho3.rd of a Border mosque and 
conducted service in the manner of a Sunni Mollah. 

His crowning achievement was spending eleven days 
as a faquir in the gardens of Baba Atal at Amritsar, and 
there picking up the threads of the great Nasiban 
Murder Case. But people said, justly enough :—Why 
on earth can’t Strickland sit in his office and write up 
his diary, and recruit, and keep quiet, instead of showing 
up the incapacity of his seniors } ” So the Nasiban 
Murder Case did him no good departmentally ; but, 
after his first feeling of wrath, he returned to his out¬ 
landish custom of prying into native life. By the way 
when a man once acquires a taste for this particular 
amusement, it abides with him all his days. It is the 
most fascinating thing in the world ; Love not excepted. 
Where other men took ten days to the Hills, Strickland 
took leave for what he called shikar, put on the disguise 
that appealed to him at the time, stepped down into the 
brown crowd, and was swallowed up for a while. He 
was a quiet, dark young fellow—spare, black-eyed—and, 
when he was not thinking of something else, a very 
interesting companion. Strickland on Native Progress 
as he had seen it was worth hearing. Natives hated 


32 


M/SS YOUGHAUS SAIS. 


Strickland ; but they were afraid of him. He knew too 
much. 

When the Youghals came into the station, Strickland 
—very gravely, as he did everything—fell in love with 
Miss Youghal; and she, after a while, fell in love with 
him because she could not understand him. Then Strick¬ 
land told the parents ; but Mrs. Youghal said she was 
not going to throw her daughter into the worst paid 
Department in the Empire, and old Youghal said, in so 
many words, that he mistrusted Strickland’s ways and 
works, and would thank him not to speak or write to his 
daughter any more. “Very well,” said Strickland, for 
he did not wish to make his lady-love’s life a burden. 
After one long talk with Miss Youghal he dropped the 
business entirely. 

The Youghals went up to Simla in April. 

In July, Strickland secured three months’ leave on 
“urgent private affairs.” He locked up his house— 
though not a native in the Province would wittingly have 
touched “ Estreekin Sahib’s” gear for the world—and 
went down to see a friend of his, an old dyer, at Tarn 
Taran. 

Here all trace of him was lost, until a sais met me on 
the Simla Mall with this extraordinary note :— 

Dear old man, 

Please give hearer a box of cheeroots — 
Supers, No. i, for preference. They are freshest at the 
Club, ril repay when I reappear ; but at present Tm out 
of Society. 

Fours. 

E. Strickland.” 

I ordered two boxes, and handed them over to the sais 
with my love. That sais was Strickland, and he was in 


Miss vougiiavs sais. 


33 

old Youg^hal’s employ, attached to Miss Youghars Arab. 
The poor fellow was suffering for an.English smoke, and 
knew that whatever happened I should hold my tongue 
till the business was over. 

Later on, Mrs. Youghal, who was wrapped up in her 
servants, began talking at houses where she called of her 
paragon among satses —the man who was never too busy 
to get up in the morning and pick flowers for the break¬ 
fast-table, and who blacked—actually blacked —the hoofs 
of his horse like a London coachman ! The turnout of 
Miss Youghal’s Arab was a wonder and a delight. 
Strickland—Dulloo,! mean—found his reward in the pretty 
things that Miss Youghal said to him when she went 
out riding. Her parents were pleased to find she had 
forgotten all her foolishness for young Strickland and sajd 
she was a good girl. 

Strickland vows that the two months of his service 
were the most rigid mental discipline he has ever gone 
through. Quite apart from the little fact that the wife of 
one of his fellow-s^zfs^s fell in love with him and then 
tried to poison him with arsenic because he would have 
nothing to do with her, he had to school himself into 
keeping quiet when Miss Youghal went out riding with 
some man who tried to flirt with her, and he was forced 
to trot behind carrying the blanket and hearing every 
word ! Also, he had to keep his temper when he was 
slanged in “Benmore'’ porch by a policeman—especially 
once when he was abused by a Naik he had himself 
recruited from Isser Jang village—or, worse still, when 
a young subaltern called him a pig for not making way 
quickly enough. 

But the life had its compensations. He obtained great 
insight into the ways and thefts of saises —enough he 
says to have summarily convicted half the chamdr popu- 



M/SS YOUGHAVS SAIS. 


34 

lation of the Punjab if he had been on business. He 
became one of the leading players at knuckle-bones, 
which all jha7npdms and many satses play while they are 
waiting outside the Government House or the Gaiety 
d'heatre of nights ; he learned to smoke tobacco that was 
three-fourths cowdung ; and he heard the wisdom of the 
grizzled Jemadar of the Government House saises. Whose 
words are valuable. He saw many things which amused 
him ; and he states, on honor, that no man can ap¬ 
preciate Simla properly, till he has seen it from the 
saiss point of view. He also says that, if he chose 
to write all he saw, his head would be broken in several 
places. 

Strickland’s account of the agony he endured on wet 
nights, hearing the music and seeing the lights in “Ben- 
more,” with his toes tingling for a waltz and his head in 
a horse-blanket, is rather amusing. One of these days, 
Strickland is going to write a little book on his expe¬ 
riences. That book will be worth buying ; and even more 
worth suppressing. 

Thus, he served faithfully as Jacob served for Rachel ; 
and his leave was nearly at an end when the explosion 
came. He had really done his best to keep his temper 
in the hearing of the flirtations I have mentioned ; but 
he broke down at last. An old and very distinguished 
General took Miss Youghal for a ride, and began that 
specially offensive “ you’re-only-a-little-girl ” sort of 
flirtation—most difficult for a woman to turn aside 
deftly, and most maddening to listen to. IMiss Youghal 
was shaking with fear at the things he said in the hearing 
of her sais. Dulloo—Strickland—stood it as long as 
he could. Then he caught hold of the General’s bridle, 
and, in most fluent English, invited him to step off 
and be heaved over the cliff. Next minute. Miss 


M/SS YOl/GNA/JS SA/S. 


35 

Youghal began crying ; and Strickland saw that he had 
hopelessly given himself away, and everything was over. 

'hhe General nearly had a fit, while Miss Youghal 
was sobbing out the story of the disguise and the 
engagement that wasn’t recognized by the parents. 
Strickland was furiously angry with himself and more 
angry with the General for forcing his hand : so he said 
nothing, but held the horse’s head and prepared to 
thrash the General as some sort of satisfaction, but 
when the General had thoroughly grasped the story, and 
knew who Strickland was, he began to puff and blow in 
the saddle, and nearly rolled off with laughing. He said 
Strickland deserved a V. C., if it were only for putting on 
a saiVs blanket. d'hen he called himself names, and 
vowed that he deserved a thrashing, but he was too old 
to take it from Strickland. 'J'hen he complimented Miss 
Youghal on her lover. The scandal of the business never 
struck him ; for he was a nice old man, with a weakness 
for flirtations. Then he laughed again, and said that old 
Youghal was a fool. Strickland let go of the cob’s head, 
and suggested that the General had better help them, if 
that was his opinion. Strickland knew Youghal’s weak¬ 
ness for men with titles and letters after their names and 
high official position. “It’s rather like a forty-minute 
farce,” said the General, “but, begad, \ ivill help, if it’s 
only to escape that tremendous thrashing I deserved. G(') 
along to your home, my 5(?/s-Policeman, and change into 
decent kit, and I’ll attack Mr. Youghal. Miss Youghal, 
may I ask you to canter home and wait? ” 

About seven minutes later, there was a wild hurroosh 
at the Club. A sais, with blanket and head-rope, was ask¬ 
ing all the men he knew : “For Heaven’s sake lend me 
decent clothes !” As the men did not recognize him, there 


MISS YOUGHAVS SAIS. 


were some peculiar scenes before Strickland could get a 
hot bath, with soda in it, in one room, a shirt here, a col¬ 
lar there, a pair of trousers elsewhere, and so on. He gal* 
loped off, with half the Club wardrobe on his back, and 
an utter stranger's pony under him, to the house of old 
Youghal. The General, arrayed in purple and fine linen, 
was before him. What the General had said Strickland 
never knew, but Youghal received Strickland with moder¬ 
ate civility; and Mrs. Youghal, touched by the devotion 
of the transformed Dulloo, was almost kind. The Gen¬ 
eral beamed and chuckled, and Miss Youghal came in, 
and, almost before old Youghal knew where he was, the 
parental consent had been wrenched out, and Strickland 
had departed with Miss Youghal to the Telegraph Office 
to wire for his kit. The final embarrassment was when 
an utter stranger attacked him on the Mall and asked for 
the stolen pony. 

So, in the end, Strickland and Miss Youghal were mar¬ 
ried, on the strict understanding that Strickland should 
drop his old ways, and stick to Departmental routine which 
pays best and leads to Simla. Strickland was far too fond 
of his wife, just then, to break his word, but it was a sore 
trial to him ; for the streets and the bazars, and the sounds 
in them, were full of meaning to Strickland, and these called 
to him to come back and take up his wanderings and his 
discoveries. Some day, I will tell you how he broke his 
promise to help a friend. That was long since, and he has, 
by this time, been nearly spoilt for what he would call 
shikar. He is forgetting the slang, and the beggar s cant, 
and the marks, and the signs, and the drift of the under¬ 
currents, which, if a man would master, he must always 
continue to learn. 

But he fills in his Departmental returns beautifully. 




•• YOKED mril AN unbeliever:* 


37 


“YOKED WITH AN UNBELIEVER.” 

I am dying for you, and you are dying for another. 

Punjabi Proverb. 

When the Gravesend tender left the P. & O. steamer 
for Bombay and went back to catch the train to Town, 
there were many people in it crying. But the one who 
wept most, and most openly, was Miss Agnes Laiter. 
She had reason to cry, because the only man she ever 
loved—or ever could love, so she said—was going out to 
India ; and India, as every one knows, is divided equally 
between jungle, tigers, cobras, cholera, and sepoys. 

Phil Garron, leaning over the side of the steamer in 
the rain, felt very unhappy too ; but he did not cry. 
He w£is sent out to “tea.” What “tea” meant he had 
not the vaguest idea, but fancied that he would have to 
ride on a prancing horse over hills covered with tea- 
vines, and draw a sumptuous salary for doing so ; and 
he was very grateful to his uncle for getting him the 
berth. He was really going to reform all his slack, 
shiftless ways, save a large proportion of his magnifi¬ 
cent salary yearly, and, in a very short time, return to 
marry Agnes Laiter. Phil Garron had been lying loose 
on his friend's hands for three years, and, as he had 
nothing to do, he naturally fell in love. He was very 
nice; but he was not strong in his views and opinions 
and principles, and though he never came to actual 
grief his friends were thankful when he said good-bye, 
and went out to this mysterious “tea” business near 


38 yOKKD WITH AN UNBELIE 

Darjiling. They said:—“God bless you, dear boy^ 
Let us never see your face again,”—or at least that was 
what Phil was given to understand. 

When he sailed, he was very full of a great plan to 
prove himself several hundred times better than any one 
had given him credit for—to work like a horse, and 
triumphantly marry Agnes Lai ter. He had many good 
points besides his good looks ; his only fault being that 
he was weak, the least little bit in the world weak, lie 
luid as much notion of economy as the Morning Sun ; 
and yet you could not lay your hand on any one item, 
and say : — “ Herein Phil Garron is extravagant or reck¬ 
less.” Nor could you point out any particular vice in 
his character : but he was “ unsatisfactory ” and as work¬ 
able as putty. 

Agnes Laiter went about her duties at home—her 
family objected to the engagement—with red eyes, while 
Phil was sailing to Darjiling—“a port on the Bengal 
Ocean,” as his mother used to tell her friends. He was 
I)opular enough on board ship, made many acquaintances 
and a moderately large liquor-bill, and sent off huge 
letters to Agnes Laiter at each port. Then he fell to 
work on this plantation, somevv'here betvv’een Darjiling 
and Kangra, and, though the salary and the horse and the 
work were not quite all he had fancied, he succeeded 
fairly well, and gave himself much unnecessary credit 
for his perseverance. 

In the course of time, as he settled more into collar, 
and his work grew fixed before him, the face of Agnes 
Laiter went out of his mind and only came when he was 
at leisure, which was not often. He would forget all about 
her for a fortnight, and remember her with a start, like a 
school-boy who has forgotten to learn his lesson. She 
did not foiget Phil, because she was of the kind that never 


“ YOKED WITH AN UNBELIEVER:^ 


39 

forgets. Only, another man—a'really desirable young 
man — presented himself before Mrs. Laiter; and the 
chance of a marriage with Phil was as far off as ever ; and 
his letters were so unsatisfactory ; and there was a certain 
amount of domestic pressure brought to bear on the girl; 
and the young man really was an eligible person as in¬ 
comes go ; and the end of all things was that Agnes mar¬ 
ried him, and wrote a tempestuous whirlwind of a letter 
to Phil in the wilds of Darjiling, and said she should never 
know a happy moment all the rest of her life. Which was 
a true prophecy. 

Phil got that letter, and held himself ill-treated. This 
was two years after he had come out; but by dint of think¬ 
ing fixedly of Agnes Laiter, and looking at her photograph, 
and patting himself on the back for being one of the most 
constant lovers in history, and warming to the work as he 
went on, he really fancied that he had been very hardly 
used. He sat down and wrote one final letter—a really 
pathetic “world without end, amen,” epistle ; explaining 
how he would be true to Eternity, and that all women 
were very much alike, and he would hide his broken 
heart, etc., etc.; but if, at any future time, etc., etc., he 
could afford to wait, etc., etc., unchanged affections, etc., 
etc., return to her old love, etc., etc., for eight closely- 
written pages. From an artistic point of view, it was very 
neat work, but an ordinary Philistine, who knew the state 
of PhiPs real feelings—not the ones he rose to as he went 
on writing—would have called it the thoroughly mean 
and selfish work of a thoroughly mean and selfish, weak 
man. But this verdict would have been incorrect. Phil 
paid for the postage, and felt every word he had written 
for at least two days and a half. It was the last flicker 
before the light went out. 

That letter made Agnes Laiter very unhappy, and she 


40 


YOKED WITH AN UNBELIEVER:^ 


cried and put it away in her desk, and became Mrs. Some¬ 
body Else for the good of her family. Which is the first 
duty of every Christian maid. 

Phil went his ways, and thought no more of his letter, 
except as an artist thinks of a neatly touched-in sketch. 
His ways were not bad, but they were not altogether 
good until they brought him across Dunmaya, the 
daughter of a Rajput ex-Subadar-Major of our Native 
Army. The girl had a strain of Hill blood in her, and, 
like the Hill-women, was not a purdah nashm. Where 
Phil met her, or how he heard of her, does not matter. 
She was a good girl and handsome, and, in her way, 
very clever and shrewd; though, of course, a little 
hard. It is to be remembered that Phil was living very 
comfortably, denying himself no small luxury, never 
putting by an anna, very satisfied with himself and 
his good intentions, was dropping all his English corre¬ 
spondents one by one, and beginning more and more 
to look upon this land as his home. Some men fall this 
way ; and they are of no use afterwards. The climate 
where he was stationed was good, and it really did 
not seem to him that there was anything to go Home 
for. 

He did what many planters have done before him— 
that is to say, he made up his mind to marry a Hill-girl 
and settle down. He was seven and twenty then, with 
a long life before him, but no spirit to go through with it. 
So he married Dunmaya by the forms of the English 
Church, and some fellow-planters said he was a fool, and 
some said he was a wise man. Dunmaya was a thor¬ 
oughly honest girl, and, in spite of her reverence for an 
Englishman, had a reasonable estimate of her husband s 
weaknesses. She managed him tenderly, and became, 
in less than a year, a very passable imitation of an Eng- 


“ YOKED W/TH AN UNBELIEVER^' 


41 


lisli lady in dress and carriage. [It is curious to think 
that a Hill-man, after a life-time's education is a Hill-man 
still ; but a Hill-woman can in six months master most of 
the ways of her English sisters. There was a coolie' 
woman once. But that is another story.] Dunmaya 
dressed by preference in black and yellow, and looked 
well. 

Meantime the letter lay in Agnes's desk, and now and 
again she would think of poor, resolute, hard-working 
Phil among the cobras and tigers of Darjiling, toiling 
in the vain hope that she might come back to him. Her 
husband was worth ten Phils, except that he had rheum¬ 
atism of the heart. Three years after he was married,— 
and after he had tried Nice and Algeria for his complaint 
—he went to Bombay, where he died, and set Agnes free. 
Being a devout woman, she looked on his death and the 
place of it, as a direct interposition of Providence, and 
when she had recovered from the shock, she took out and 
re-read Phil's letter with the “etc., etc.," and the big 
dashes, and the little dashes, and kissed it several times. 
No one knew her in Bombay; she had her husband's in¬ 
come, which was a large one, and Phil was close at hand. 
It was wrong and improper, of course, but she decided, 
as heroines do in novels, to find her old lover, to offer 
him her hand and her gold, and with him spend the rest 
of her life in some spot far from unsympathetic souls. 
She sat for two months, alone in Wcitson's Hotel, elabo¬ 
rating this decision, and the picture was a pretty one. 
Then she set out in search of Phil Garron, Assistant on a 
tea plantation with a more than usually unpronounceable 
name. 

She found him. She spent a month over it, for his 
plantation was not in the Darjiling district at all, but 


42 


“ YOKED WITH AN UNBELIEVE ED 


nearer Kangra. Phil was very little altered, and Dun- 
inaya was very nice to her. 

Now the particular sin and shame of the whole busi¬ 
ness is that Phil who really is not worth thinking of 
twice, was and is loved by Dunmaya, and more than 
loved by Agnes, the whole of whose life he seems to have 
spoilt. 

Worst of all, Dunmaya is making a decent man of 
him ; and lie will be ultimately saved from pcrditiou 
through her training. 

Which is manifestly unfair. 


I^'ALSE DA 


43 


FALSE DAWN, 

To-night God knows wluit thing sliall tide, 

The Earth is racked and faint— 

Expectant, sleepless, open-eyed ; 

And we, who from the Earth were made, 

Thrill with our Mother’s pain. 

In Durance. 

No man will ever know the exact truth of this story; 
though women may sometimes whisper it to one another 
after a dance, when they are putting up their hair for the 
night and comparing lists of victims. A man, of course, 
cannot assist at these functions. So the tale must be told 
from the outside—in the dark—all wrong. 

Never praise a sister to a sister, in the hope of your 
compliments reaching the proper ears, and so preparing 
the way for you later on. Sisters are women first, and 
sisters afterwards ; and you will find that you do your¬ 
self harm. 

Saumarez knew this when he made up his mind to 
]u*opose to the elder Miss Copleigh. Saumarez was a 
strange man, with few merits, so far as men could see, 
though he was popular with women, and carried enough 
conceit to stock a Viceroy's Council and leave a little 
over for the Commander-in-Chiefs Staff. He was a 
Civilian. Very many women took an interest in Sau¬ 
marez, perhaps, because his manner to them was offensive. 
If you hit a pony over the nose at the outset of your 
acquaintance, he may not love you, but he will take a 
deep interest in your movements ever afterwards. The 


FALSE DA WN. 


44 

elder MissCopleigh was nice, plump, winning and pretty. 
'I'he younger was not so pretty, and, from men disre¬ 
garding the hint set forth above, her style was repellant 
and unattractive. Both girls had, practically, the same 
figure, and there was a strong likeness between them in 
look and voice; though no one could doubt for an in¬ 
stant which was the nicer of the two. 

Saumarez made up his mind, as soon as they came 
into the station from Behar, to marry the elder one. At 
least, we all made sure that he would, which comes to 
the same thing. She was two and twenty, and he was 
thirty-three, with pay and allowances of nearly fourteen 
hundred rupees a month. So the match, as we arranged 
it, was in every way a good one. Saumarez was his 
name, and summary was his nature, as a man once said. 
Having drafted his Resolution, he formed a Select Com¬ 
mittee of One to sit upon it, and resolved to take his 
time. In our unpleasant slang, the Copleigh girls ‘ ‘ hunted 
in couples.’' That is to say, you could do nothing with 
one without the other. They were very loving sisters; 
but their mutual affection was sometimes inconvenient. 
Saumarez held the balance-hair true between them, and 
none but himself could have said to which side his heart 
inclined; though every one guessed. He rode with 
them a good deal and danced with them, but he never 
succeeded in detaching them from each other for any 
length of time. 

Women said that the two girls kept together through 
deep mistrust, each fearing that the other would steal 
a march on her. But that has nothing to do with a man. 
Saumarez was silent for good or bad, and as business- 
likely attentive as he could be, having due regard to his 
work and his polo. Beyond doubt both girls were fond 
of him. 


FALSE DA WJ\r. 


45 

As the hot weather drew nearer and Saumarez made 
no sign, women said that you could see their trouble in 
the eyes of the girls—that they were looking strained, 
anxious, and irritable. Men are quite blind in these 
matters unless they have more of the woman than the 
man in their composition, in which case it does not 
matter, what they say or think. 1 maintain it was the 
hot April days that took the color out of the Copleigh 
girls’ cheeks. They should have been sent to the Hills 
early. No one—man or woman—feels an angel when 
the hot weather is approaching. The younger sister 
grew more cynical—not to say acid—in her ways; and 
the winningness of the elder wore thin. There was more 
effort in it. 

Now the Station wherein all these things happened 
was, though not a little one, off the line of rail, and suf¬ 
fered through want of attention. There were no gar¬ 
dens, or bands or amusements worth speaking of, and 
it was nearly a day’s journey to come into Lahore for a 
dance. People were grateful for small things to interest 
them. 

About the beginning of May, and just before the final 
exodus of Hill-goers, wheiT the weather was very hot 
and there were not more than twenty people in the 
Station, Saumarez gave a moonlight riding-picnic at an 
old tomb, six miles away, near the bed of the river. It 
was a “Noah’s Ark” picnic; and there was to be the 
usual arrangement of quarter-mile intervals between 
each couple, on account of the dust. Six couples came 
altogether, including chaperones. Moonlight picnics are 
useful just at the very end of the season, before all the 
girls go away to the Hills. They lead to understandings, 
and should be encouraged by chaperones; especially 
those whose girls look sweetest in riding habits. I knew 


46 


i^'alsjS da WN. 


a case once. But that is another story. That picnic was 
called the “ Great Pop Picnic/’ because every one knew 
Saumarez would propose then to the eldest Miss Copleigh ; 
and, besides his affair, there was another which might 
possibly come to happiness. 7'he social atmosphere was 
heavily charged and wanted clearing. 

We met at the parade-ground at ten : the night was 
fearfully hot. The horses sweated even at walking-pace, 
but anything was better than sitting still in our own dark 
houses. When we moved off under the full moon we 
were four couples, one triplet, and Mr. Saumarez rode 
with the Copleigh girls, and I loitered at the tail of the 
procession wondering with whom Saumarez would ride 
home. Every one was happy and contented ; but we all 
felt that things were going to happen. We rode slowly ; 
and it was nearly midnight before we reached the old 
tomb, facing the ruined tank, in the decayed gardens 
where we were going to eat and drink. I was late in 
coming up ; and, before I went in to the garden, I saw 
that the horizon to the north carried a faint, dun-colored 
feather. But no one would have thanked me for spoiling 
so well-managed an entertainment as this picnic—and a 
dust-storm, more or less, does no great harm. 

We gathered by the tank. Some one had brought out 
a banjo—which is a most sentimental instrument—and 
three or four of us sang. You must not laugh at this. 
Our amusements in out-of-the-way Stations are very few 
indeed. Then we talked in groups or together, lying 
under the trees, with the sun-baked roses dropping their 
petals on our feet, until supper was ready. It was a 
beautiful supper, as cold and as iced as you could wish ; 
and we stayed long over it. 

I had felt that the air was growing hotter and hotter ; 
but nobody seemed to notice it until the moon went out 


FALSE DA WN. 


47 


and a burning hot wind began lashing the orange-trees 
with a sound like the noise of the sea. Before we knew 
where we were, the dust-storm was on us, and every¬ 
thing was roaring, whirling darkness. The supper- 
table was blown bodily into the tank. We were afraid 
of staying anywhere near the old tomb for fear it might 
be blown down. So we felt our way to the orange-trees 
where the horses were picketed and waited for the storm 
to blow over. Then the little light that was left van¬ 
ished, and you could not see your hand before your face. 
The air was heavy with dust and sand from the bed of 
the river, that filled boots and pockets and drifted down 
necks and coated eyebrows and moustaches. It was 
one of the worst dust-storms of the year. We were all 
huddled together close to the trembling horses, with the 
thunder chattering overhead, and the lightning spurting 
like water from a sluice, all ways at once. There was 
no danger, of course, unless the horses broke loose. I 
was standing with my head downwind and my hands 
over my mouth, hearing the trees thrashing each other. 
I could not see who was next me till the flashes came. 
Then I found that I was packed near Saumarez and the 
eldest Miss Copleigh, with my own horse just in front of 
me. I recognized the eldest Miss Copleigh, because she 
had a pas^ri round her helmet, and the younger had not. 
All the electricity in the air had gone into my body and 
I was quivering and tingling from head to foot—exactly 
as a corn shoots and tingles before rain. It was a grand 
storm. The wind seemed to be picking up the earth and 
pitching it to leeward in great heaps ; and the heat beat 
up from the ground like the heat of the Day of Judgment. 

The storm lulled slightly after the first half-hour, and I 
heard a despairing little voice close to my ear, saying to 
itself, quietly and softly, as if some lost soul were flying 


P'ALSJS DAIVA\ 


48 

about with the wind :—“ O my God !Then the younger 
Miss Copleigh stumbled into my arms, saying : ‘‘Where 
is my horse ? Get my horse. I want to go home. I 
zvafU to go home. Take me home.’' 

I thought that the lightning and the black darkness had 
frightened her ; so I said there was no danger, but she 
must wait till the storm blew over. She answered : “It 
is not that! It is not that! I want to go home ! O take 
me away from here ! ” 

I said that she could not go till the light came; but I 
felt her brush past me and go away. It was too dark to 
see where. Then the whole sky w'as split open with one 
tremendous flash, as if the end of the world were coming, 
and all the women shrieked. 

Almost directly after this, I felt a man’s hand on my 
shoulder and heard Saumarez bellowing in my ear. 
Through the rattling of the trees and howling of the wind, 
1 did not catch his words at once, but at last I heard him 
say :—“ I’ve proposed to the wrong one ! What shall I 
do .? ” Saumarez had no occasion to make this confidence 
to me. I was never a friend of his, nor am I now ; but 
I fancy neither of us were ourselves just then. He was 
shaking as he stood with excitement, and I was feeling 
queer all over with the electricity. I could not think of 
anything to say except:—“ More fool you for proposing 
in a dust storm.” But I did not see how that would 
improve the mistake. 

Then he shouted :—“ Where's Edith—Edith Cop¬ 
leigh } ” Edith was the younger sister. I answered out 
of my astonishment :—“What do you want with her?'" 
Would you believe it, for the next two minutes, he and 
I were shouting at each other like maniacs,—he vowing 
that it was the younger sister he had meant to propose 
to all along, and I telling him till my throat was hoarse 


P'ALS£: r>A PVA'. 


49 

that he must have made a mistake ! I can't account for 
this except, again, by the fact that we were neither 
of us ourselves. Everything seemed to me like a bad 
dream—from the stamping of the horses in the dark¬ 
ness to Saumarez telling me the story of his loving 
Edith Copleigh since the first. He was still clawing my 
shoulder and begging me to tell him where Edith Cop¬ 
leigh was, when another lull came and brought light with 
it, and we saw the dust-cloud forming on the plain in 
front of us. So we knew the worst was over. The moon 
was low down, and there was just the glimmer of the 
false dawn that comes about an hour before the real one. 
But the light was very faint, and the dun cloud roared 
like a bull. I wondered where Edith Copleigh had gone ; 
and as I was wondering I saw three things together : First 
IMaud Copleigh’s face come smiling out of the darkness 
and move towards Saumarez who was standing by me. 
1 heard the girl whisper ;—“ George," and slide her arm 
through the arm that was not clawing my shoulder, and 
I saw that look on her face which only comes once or 
twice in a life-time—when a woman is perfectly happy 
and the air is full of trumpets and gorgeous-colored 
fire and the Earth turns into cloud because she loves and 
is loved. At the same time, I saw Saumarez’s face as he 
heard Maud Copleigh’s voice, and fifty yards away from 
the clump of orange-trees, I saw a brown holland habit 
getting upon a horse. 

It must have been my state of over-excitement that made 
me so quick to meddle with what did not concern me. 
Saumarez was moving off to the habit; but I pushed him 
back and said:—“ Stop here and explain. I’ll fetch her 
back ! ” And I ran out to get at my own horse. I had a 
perfectly unnecessary notion that everything must be 
done decently and in order, and that Saumarez's first care 


50 


FALSE DAWN. 


was to wipe the happy look out of Maud Copleigh s face. 
All the time I was linking up the curb-chain I wondered 
how he would do it. 

I cantered after Edith Copleigh, thinking to bring her 
back slowly on some pretence or another. But she gal¬ 
loped away as soon as she saw me, and I was forced to 
ride after her in earnest. She called back over her 
.shoulder—“Go away! Erngoinghome. Oh, goaway!’’ 
turn or three times ; but my business was to catch her 
first, and argue later. The ride just fitted in with the rest 
of the evil dream, d'he ground was very bad, and now 
and again we rushed through the whirling, choking “ dust- 
devils ” in the skirts of the flying storm. There was a 
burning hot wind blowing that brought up a stench of 
stale brick-kilns with it; and through the half light and 
through the dust-devils, across that desolate plain, flick¬ 
ered the brown holland habit on the gray horse. She 
headed for the Station at first. Then she wheeled round 
and set off for the river through beds of burnt down jungle- 
grass, bad even to ride pig over. In cold blood I should 
never have dreamed of going over such a country at night, 
but it seemed quite right and natural with the lightning 
crackling over head, and a reek like the smell of the Pit in 
my nostrils. I rode and shouted, and she bent forward 
and lashed her horse, and the aftermath of the dust-storm 
came up and caught us both, and drove us downwind 
like pieces of paper. 

I don’t know how far we rode ; but the drumming of 
the horse-hoofs and the roar of the wind and the race 
of the faint blood-red moon through the yellow mist 
seemed to have gone on for years and years, and I was 
literally drenched with sweat from my helmet to my 
gaiters when the grey stumbled, recovered himself, and 
pulled up dead lame. My brute was used up altogether. 


FALSE DA IVAT. 


51 

Edith Copleigh was in a sad state, plastered with dust, 
her helmet off, and crying bitterly. “ Why can’t you let 
me alone ? ” she said. “ I only wanted to get away and 
go home. Oh, please let me go ! ” 

“ You hav'e got to come back with me. Miss Copleigh. 
Saumarez has something to say to you.” 

It was a foolish way of putting it ; but I hardly knew 
Miss Copleigh, and, though 1 was playing Providence at 
the cost of my horse, I could not tell her in as many 
words what Saumarez had told me. I thought he could 
do that better himself. All her pretence about being 
tired and wanting to go home broke down, and she 
rocked herself to and fro in the saddle as she sobbed, 
and the hot wind blew her black hair to leeward. 1 am 
not going to repeat what she said, because she was 
utterly unstrung. 

This, if you please, was the cynical Miss Copleigh. 
Here was I, almost an utter stranger to her, trying to 
tell her that Saumarez loved her and she was to come 
back to hear him say so 1 I believe I made myselt 
understood, for she gathered the gray together and made 
him hobble somehow, and we set off for the tomb, while 
the storm went thundering down to Umballa and a few 
big drops of warm rain fell. I found out that she had 
been standing close to Saumarez when he proposed to 
her sister, and had wanted to go home to cry in peace, 
as an Engli.sh girl should. She dabbed her eyes with 
her pocket-handkerchief as we went along, and babbled 
tO me out of sheer lightness of heart and hysteria. That 
was perfectly unnatural; and yet, it seemed all right at the 
time and in the place. All the world was only the two 
Copleigh girls, Saumarez and I, ringed in with the light¬ 
ning and the dark ; and the guidance of this misguided 
world seemed to lie in my hands. 


52 


FALSE DA IVFT. 


When we returned to the tomb in the deep, dead still¬ 
ness that followed the storm, the dawn was just breaking 
and nobody had gone away. They were waiting for our 
return. Saumarez most of all. His face was white and 
drawn. As Miss Copleigh and I limped up, he came 
forward to meet us, and, when he helped her down from 
her saddle, he kissed her before all the picnic. It was 
like a scene in a theatre, and the likeness was heightened 
by all the dust-white, ghostly-looking men and women 
under the orange-trees, clapping their hands—as if they 
were watching a play—at Saumarez’s choice. I never 
knew anything so un-English in my life. 

Lastly, Saumarez said we must all go home or the 
Station would come out to look for us, and ivould I be 
good enough to ride home with Maud Copleigh } Noth¬ 
ing would give me greater pleasure, I said. 

So, we formed up, six couples in all, and went back 
two by two ; Saumarez walking at the side of Edith 
Copleigh, who was riding his horse. 

The air was cleared; and little by little, as the sun 
rose, I felt we were all dropping back again into ordinary 
men and women and that the “Great Pop Picnic'’ was a 
thing altogether apart and out of the world—never to 
liappen again. It had gone with the dust-storm and the 
tingle in the hot air. 

I felt tired and limp, and a good deal ashamed of my¬ 
self as I went in for a bath and some sleep. 

There is a woman's version of this story, but it will 
never be written .... unless Maud Copleigh cares to 

try. 


THE RESCUE OE RLUEELES, 


53 


THE RESCUE OF PLUFFLES. 

Thus, for a season, tliey fought it fair— 

She and his cousin May— 

'i'actful, talented, delwnnaire, 

Decorous foes were they ; 

Put never can battle of man compare 
With merciless feminine fray. 

Tivo and One. 

Mrs. IIauksbee was sometimes nice to her own sex. 
Here is a story to prove this ; and you can believe just as 
much as ever you please. 

Pluffles was a subaltern in the “Unmentionables.” He 
was callow, even for a subaltern. He was callow all over 
—like a canary that had not finished fledging itself. The 
worst of it was he had three times as much money as 
was good for him ; Pluffles’ Papa being a rich man and 
Iduffles being the only son. Pluffles’ Mamma adored him. 
Site was only a little less callow than Pluffles and she 
believed everything he said. 

Pluffles’ weakness was not believing what people said. 
He preferred what he called “trusting to his own judg¬ 
ment.” He had as much judgment as he had seat or 
hands ; and this preference tumbled him into trouble once 
or twice. But the biggest trouble Pluffles ever manufac¬ 
tured came about at Simla—some years ago, when he was 
four-and-twcnty. 

He began by trusting to his own judgment, as usual, 


54 


the rescue of flu fixes. 


and the result was that, after a time, he was bound hand 
and foot to Mrs. Reiver’s'rickshaw wheels. 

There was nothing good about Mrs. Reiver, unless 
it was her dress. She was bad from her hair—which 
started life on a Brittany girl’s head—to her boot-heels 
which were two and three-eight inches high, She was 
not honestly mischievous like Mrs. Hauksbee ; she was 
wicked in a business-like way. 

There was never any scandal—she had not generous 
impulses enough for that. She was the exception which 
proved the rule that Anglo-Indian ladies are in every 
way as nice as their sisters at Home. She spent her 
life in proving that rule. 

Mrs. Hauksbee and she hated each other fervently. 
They heard far too much to clash; but the things they 
said of each other were startling—not to say original. 
Mrs. Hauksbee was honest—honest as her own front- 
teeth—and, but for her love of mischief, would have 
been a woman’s woman. There was no honesty about 
Mrs. Reiver ; nothing but selfishness. And at the begin¬ 
ning of the season, poor little Pluffies fell a prey to her. 
She laid herself out to that end, and who was Pluffies 
to resist.? He went on trusting to his judgment, and he 
got judged. 

I have seen Hayes argue with a tough horse—I have 
seen a tonga-driver coerce a stubborn pony—I have 
seen a riotous setter broken to gun by a hard keeper— 
but the breaking-in of Pluffies of the “Unmentionables” 
was beyond all these. He learned to fetch and carry 
like a dog, and to wait like one, too, for a word from 
Mrs. Reiver. He learned to keep appointments which 
Mrs. Reiver had no intention of keeping. He learned 
to take thankfully dances which Mrs. Reiver had no 
intention of giving him. He learned to shiver for an 


THE RESCUE OF FLUFFLES. 


55 


hour and a quarter on the windward side of Elysium 
while Mrs. Reiver was making up her mind to come 
for a ride. He learned to hunt for a ‘rickshaw, in a light 
dress-suit under pelting rain, and to walk by the side of 
th^it rickshaw when he had found it. He learned what 
it w'as to be. spoken to like a coolie and ordered about 
like a cook. He learned all this and many other things 
besides. And he paid for his schooling. 

Perhaps, in some hazy way, he 'fancied that it wets 
fine and impressive, that it gave him a status among 
men, and was altogether the thing to do. It was 
nobody's business to warn Pluffles that he was unwise. 
The pace that season was too good to inquire; and 
meddling with another man's folly is always thankless 
work. Pluffles’ Colonel should have ordered him back 
to his regiment when he heard how things were going. 
But Pluffles had got himself engaged to a girl in Eng¬ 
land the last time he went Home; and if there was 
one thing more than another which the Colonel detested, 
it was a married subaltern. He chuckled when he heard 
of the education of Pluffles, and said it was “good 
training for the boy." But it was not good training 
in the least. It led him into spending money beyond 
his means, which were good : above that the educa¬ 
tion spoilt an average boy and made it a tenth-rate 
man of an objectionable kind. He wandered into a 
bad set, and his little bill at Hamilton’s was a thing 
to wonder at. 

Then Mrs. Hauksbee rose to the occeision. She 
played her game alone, knowing what people would say 
of her ; and she played it for the sake of a girl she had 
never seen. Pluffles’ fiancee was to come out, under 
chaperonage of an aunt, in October, to be married to 
Pluffles. 


THE RESCUE OF PLUFFLES. 


56 

At the beginning of August, Mrs. Hauksbee dis¬ 
covered that it was time to interfere. A man who rides 
much knows exactly what a horse is going to do next 
before he does it. In the same way, a woman of Mrs. 
Hauksbee’s experience knows accurately how a boy will 
behave under certain circumstances—notably when he 
is infatuated with one of Mrs. Reiver’s stamp. She said 
that, sooner or later, little Pluffles would break off that 
engagement for nothing at all—simply to gratify Mrs. 
Reiver, who, in return, would keep him at her feet and 
in her service just so long as she found it worth her 
while. She said she knew the signs of these things. If 
she did not, no one else could. 

Then she went forth to capture Pluffles under the 
guns of the enemy; just as Mrs. Cusack-Bremmil carried 
away Bremmil under Mrs. Hauksbee’s eyes. 

This particular engagement lasted seven weeks—we 
called it the Seven Weeks’ War—and was fought out 
inch by inch on both sides. A detailed account would 
fill a book, and would be incomplete then. Any one 
who knows about these things can fit in the details for 
himself. It was a superb fight—there will never be 
another like it as long as Jakko stands—and Pluffles 
was the prize of victory. People said shameful things 
about Mrs. Hauksbee. They did not know what she 
was playing for. Mrs. Reiver fought, partly because 
I luffles was useful to her, but mainly because she hated 
Mrs. Hauksbee, and the matter was a trial of strength 
between them. No one knows what Pluffles thought. 
He had not many ideas at the best of times, and the 
few he possessed made him conceited. Mrs. Hauksbee 
said The boy must be caught ; and the only way 
of catching him is by treating him well.” 

So she treated him as a man of the world and of 


THE RESCUE OF PLUFFLES. 


57 


experience so long as the issue was doubtful. Little by 
little, Pluffles fell away from his old allegiance and came 
over to the enemy, by whom he was made much of. He 
was never sent on out-post duty after ’rickshaws any 
more, nor was he given dances which never came off, 
nor were the drains on his purse continued. Mrs. Hauks- 
bee held him on the snaffle ; and, after his treatment at 
Mrs. Reiver’s hands, he appreciated the change. 

Mrs. Reiver had broken him of talking about him¬ 
self, and made him talk about her own merits. Mrs. 
Hauksbee acted otherwise, and won his confidence, 
till he mentioned his engagement to the girl at Home, 
speaking of it in a high and mighty way ixs a “ piece 
of boyish folly.” This was when he was taking tea 
with her one afternoon, and discoursing in what he 
considered a gay and fascinating style. Mrs. Hauksbee 
had seen an earlier generation of his stamp bud and 
blossom, and decay into fat Captains and tubby Majors. 

At a moderate estimate there were about three and 
twenty sides to that lady’s character. Some men say 
more. She began to talk to Pluffles after the manner of 
a mother, and as if there had been three hundred years, 
instead of fifteen, between them. She spoke with a sort 
of throaty quaver in her voice which had a soothing 
effect, though what she said was anything but soothing. 
She pointed out the exceeding folly, not to say rneain 
ness, of Pluffles’ conduct, and the smallness of his views. 
Then he stammered something about “trusting to his 
own judgment as a man of the world ; ’ and this paved 
the way for what she wanted to say next. It would have 
withered up Pluffles had it come from any other woman ; 
but in the soft cooing style in which Mrs. Hauksbee put 
it, it only made him feel limp and repentant—as if he 
had been in some superior kind of church. Little by 


THE RESCUE OF PLUFFLES. 


58 

little, very softly and pleasantly, she began taking the 
conceit out of Pluffles, as you take the ribs out of an 
umbrella before re-covering it. She told him what she 
thought of him and his judgment and his knowledge of 
the world; and how his performances had made him 
ridiculous to other people ; and how it was his intention 
to make love to herself if she gave him the chance. Then 
she said that marriage would be the making of him ; 
and drew a pretty little picture—all rose and opal—of 
the Mrs. Pluffles of the future going through life relying 
on the “judgment’’and “knowledge of the world’'of 
a husband who had nothing to reproach himself with. 
How she reconciled these two statements she alone knew. 
But they did not strike Pluffles as conflicting. 

Hers was a perfect little homily—much better than any 
clergyman could have given—and it ended with touching 
allusions to Pluffles’ Mamma and Papa, and the wisdom 
of taking his bride Home. 

Then she sent Pluffles out for a walk, to think over 
what she had said. Pluffles left, blowing his nose very 
hard and holding himself very straight. Mrs. Hauksbee 
laughed. , 

What Pluffles had intended to do in the matter of the 
engagement only Mrs. Reiver knew, and she kept her 
own counsel to her death. She would have liked it 
spoiled as a compliment, I fancy. 

Pluffles enjoyed many talks with Mrs. Hauksbee during 
the next few days. They were all to the same end, and 
they helped Pluffles in the path of Virtue. 

iMrs. Hauksbee wanted to keep him under her wing 
to the last. Therefore she discountenanced his going 
down to Bombay to get married. ‘ ‘ Goodness only knows 
what might happen by the way !" she said. “Pluffles 


THE RESCUE OF PLUFFLES. 


5Q 

is cursed witli the curse of Reuben, and India is no fit 
place for him ! ” 

In the end, the fiancee arrived with her aunt ; and 
Pluffles, having reduced his affairs to some sort of order 
—here again Mrs. Hauksbee helped him—was married. 

Mrs. Hauksbee gave a sigh of relief when both the 
“ I wills had been said, and went her way. 

Pluffles took her advice about going Home. He left 
the Service, and is now raising speckled cattle inside 
green painted fences somewhere at Home. I believe 
he does this very judiciously. He would have come to 
extreme grief out here. 

For these reeisons if any one says anything more than 
usually nasty about Mrs. Hauksbee, tell him the story of 
the Rescue of Pluffles. 


CUFWS ARROWS, 


CUPID'S ARROWS. 


Pit wlierc the huft'alo cooled his hide, 

By the hot sun emptied, and blistered and dried * 

Log in the n7^-grass, hidden and lone ; 

Binui wliere the earth-rat’s mounds are strown ; 

Cave in the bank where the sly stream steals ; 

Aloe that stabs at the belly and heels, 

Jump if you dare on a steed untried— 

Safer it is to go wide—go wide ! 

Ilark^ from in front where the best men ride :— 

J’n/f to the off, boys ! Wide ! Go wide ! ” 

The Peora Hunt, 

Once upon a time there lived at Simla a very pretty girl, 
the daughter of a poor but honest District and Sessions 
Judge. She was a good girl, but could not help knowing 
her power and using it. Her Mamma was very anxious 
about her daughter's future, as all good Mammas should 
be. 

When a man is a Commissioner and a bachelor and 
lias the right of wearing open-work jam-tart jewels in 
gold and enamel on his clothes, and of going through 
a door before every one except a Member of Council, a 
Lieutenant-Governor, or a Viceroy, he is worth marry¬ 
ing. At least, that is what ladies say. There was a 
Commissioner in Simla, in those days, who was, and 
wore, and did, all I have said. He was a plain man— 
an ugly man—the ugliest man in Asia, with two excep¬ 
tions. His was a face to dream about and try to carve 
on a pipe-head afterwards. His name was Saggott— 
Barr-Saggott—Anthony Barr-Saggott and six letters to 


CUPID''S ARROWS. 


6 i 

follow. Departmentally, he was one of the best men the 
Government of India owned. Socially, he was like a 
blandishing gorilla. 

When he turned his attentions to Miss Beighton, I believe 
that Mrs. Beighton wept with delight at the reward Provi¬ 
dence had sent her in her old age. 

Mr. Beighton held his tongue. He was an easy-going 
man. 

Now a Commissioner is very rich. His pay is beyond 
the dreams of avarice—is so enormous that he can afford 
to save and scrape in a way that would almost discredit 
a Member of Council. Most Commissioners are mean ; 
but Barr-Saggott was an exception. He entertained 
royally ; he horsed himself well ; he gave dances ; he 
was a power in the land ; and he behaved as such. 

Consider that everything I am writing of took place 
in an almost pre-historic era in the history of British 
India. Some folk may remember the years before lawn- 
tennis was born when we all played croquet. There 
were seasons before that, if you will believe me, when 
even croquet had not been invented, and archery—which 
was revived in England in 1844—was as great a pest as 
lawn-tennis is now. People talked learnedly about 
“holding’' and “loosing,” “steles,” reflexed bows,” 
“ 56-pound bows,” “ backed ” or “self-yew bows,” as we 
talk about “rallies,” “volleys,” “smashes,” “returns,’’ 
and “ 16-ounce rackets.” 

Miss Beighton shot divinely over ladies’ distance— 
60 yards, that is—and was acknowledged the best 
lady archer in Simla. Men called her “ Diana of Tara- 
Devi.” 

Bar-Saggott paid her great attention ; and, as I have 
said, the heart of her mother was uplifted in consequence. 
Kitty Beighton took matters more calmly. It was pleas- 


62 


CUPljyS ARROWS, 


ant to be singled out by a Commissioner with letters 
after his name, and to fill the hearts of other girls with 
bad feelings. But there was no denying the fact that 
Barr-Saggott was phenomenally ugly ; and all his at¬ 
tempts to adorn himself only made him more grotesque. 
He was not christened '‘The Langur ’'—which means 
gray ape—for nothing. It was pleasant, Kitty thought, 
to have him at her feet, but it was better to escape 
from him and ride with the graceless Cubbon—the man 
in a Dragoon Regiment at Umballa—the boy with a hand¬ 
some face, and no prospects. Kitty liked Cubbon more 
than a little. He never pretended for a moment that he 
was anything less than head over heels in love with her ; 
for he was an honest boy. So Kitty fled, now and again, 
from the stately wooings of Barr-Saggott to the com¬ 
pany of young Cubbon, and was scolded by her Mam¬ 
ma in consequence. ‘*But, Mother,'’ she said, '‘Mr. 
Saggott is such—such a—is so fearfully ugly, you 
know ! 

“ My dear,” said Mrs. Beighton piously, “ we cannot 
be other than an all-ruling Providence has made us. 
Besides, you will take precedence of your own Mother, 
you know ! Think of that and be reasonable.” 

1 hen Kitty put up her little chin and said irreverent 
things about precedence, and Commissioners, and matri¬ 
mony. Mr. Beighton rubbed the top of his head ; for 
he was an easy-going man. 

Late in the season, when he judged that the time was 
ripe, Barr-Saggot developed a plan which did great credit 
to his administrative powers. He arranged an archery- 
tournament for ladies with a most sumptuous diamond- 
studded bracelet as prize. He drew up his terms skil¬ 
fully, and every one saw that the bracelet was a gift to 
Miss Beighton ; the acceptance carrying with it the hand 


CUPID'^S ARROWS, 


<53 

and the heart of Commissioner Barr-Saggott. The terms 
were a St. Leonard’s Round—thirty-six shots at sixty yards 
—under the rules of the Simla Toxophilite Society. 

All Simla was invited. There were beautifully arranged 
tea-tables under the deodars at Annandale, where the 
Grand Stand is now ; and, alone in its glory, winking in 
the sun, sat the diamond bracelet in a blue velvet case. 
jMiss Beighton was anxious—almost too anxious—to com¬ 
pete. On the appointed afternoon, all Simla rode down 
to Annandale to witness the Judgment of Paris turned up¬ 
side down. Kitty rode with young Cubbon, and it was 
easy to see that the boy was troubled in his mind. He 
must be held innocent of everything that followed. Kitty 
was pale and nervous, and looked long at the bracelet. 
Barr-Saggot was gorgeously dressed, even more nervous 
than Kitty, and more hideous than ever. 

Mrs. Beighton smiled condescendingly, as befitted the 
mother of a potential Commissioneress, and the shooting 
began ; all the world standing a semicircle as the ladies 
came out one after the other. 

Nothing is so tedious as an arcTiery competition. 
They shot, and they shot, and they kept on shooting, 
till the sun left the valley, and little breezes got up iw 
the deodars, and people waited for Miss Beighton to 
shoot and win. Cubbon was at one horn of the semi¬ 
circle round the shooters, and Barr-Saggot at the other. 
Miss Beighton was last on the list. The scoring had been 
weak, and the bracelet, plus Commissioner Barr-Saggott, 
was hers to a certainty. 

The Commissioner strung her bow with his own sacred 
hands. She stepped forward, looked at the bracelet, and 
her first arrow went true to a hair—full into the heart of 
the “gold ”—counting nine points. 

Young Cubbon on the left turned white, and his Devil 


64 


CVPID'^S AkROWS. 


prompted Barr-Saggot to smile. Now horses used to shy 
when Barr-Saggot smiled. Kitty saw that smile. She 
looked to her left-front, gave an almost imperceptible nod 
to Cubbon, and went on shooting. 

I wish I could describe the scene that followed. It 
was out of the ordinary and most improper. Miss 
Kitty fitted her arrows with immense deliberation, so 
that every one might see what she was doing. She was 
a perfect shot ; and her 46-pound bow suited her to a 
nicety. She pinned the wooden legs of the target with 
great care four successive times. She pinned the wooden 
top of the target once,'and all the ladies looked at each 
other. Then she began some fancy shooting at the 
white, which if you hit it, counts exactly one point. 
She put five arrows into the white. It was wonderful 
archery ; but, seeing that her business was to make 
“golds” and win the bracelet, Barr-Saggot turned a 
delicate green like young water-grass. Next, she shot 
over the target twice, then wide to the left twice— 
always with the same deliberation—while a chilly hush 
fell over the company, and Mrs. Beighton took out her 
handkerchief. Then Kitty shot at the ground in front 
of the target, and split several arrows. Then she made 
a red—or seven points—just to show what she could 
do if she liked, and she finished up her amazing per¬ 
formance with some more fancy shooting at the target- 
supports. Here is her score as it was pricked off:— 

Gold. Red. Blue. Black. White. Total Hits. Total Score. 
Miss Beighton 1100 5 7 21 

Barr-Saggot looked as if the last few arrow-heads 
had been driven into his legs instead of the target’s, 
and the deep stillness was broken by a littte snubby, 
mottled, half-grown girl saying in a shrill voice of 
triumph, — “ Then I've won I ” 


CUPID'S ARROWS. 


65 

Mrs. Beighton did her best to bear up; but she wept 
in the presence of the people. No training could help 
her through such a disappointment. Kitty unstrung 
her bow with a vicious jerk, and went back to her place, 
while Barr-Saggott was trying to pretend that he enjoyed 
snapping the bracelet on the snubby girl’s raw, red 
wrist. It was an awkward scene—most awkward. Every 
one tried to depart in a body and leave Kitty to the 
mercy of her Mamma. 

But Cubbon took her away instead, and—the rest 
i*n’t worth printing. 


5 


66 


THE THREE MUSKETEERS. 


THE THREE MUSKETEERS. 

An’ when the war began, we chased the bold Afghan, 

An’ we made the bloomin’ Ghazi for to flee, boys O ! 

An’ we marched into Kabul^ and we tuk the Balar ’Issar 
An’ we taught ’em to respec’ the British Soldier. 

Barrack Room Ballad. 

Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd are Privates in R 
Company of a Line Regiment, and personal friends 
of mine. Collectively I think, but am not certai:**, the^ 
are the worst men in the regiment so far as genial black¬ 
guardism goes. 

They told me this story, the other day, in the Um- 
balla Refreshment Room while we were waiting for 
an up-train. I supplied the beer. The tale was cheap 
at a gallon and a half. 

Of course you know Lord Benira Trig. He is a 
Duke, or an Earl, or something unofficial ; also a 
Peer ; also a Globe-trotter. On all three counts, as 
Ortheris says, “ ^e didn’t deserve no consideration.” He 
was out here for three months collecting materials 
for a book on “ Our Eastern Impedimenta,” and quarter¬ 
ing himself upon everybody, like a Cossack in evening- 
dress. 

His particular vice—because he was a Radical, I sup¬ 
pose—was having garrisons turned out for his inspec¬ 
tion. He would then dine with the Officer Command¬ 
ing, and insult him, across the Mess table, about the 
appearance of the troops. That was Benira’s way. 


THE THREE MUSKETEERS. 


67 

He turned out troops once too often. He came to 
Helanthami Cantonment on a Tuesday. He wished 
to go shopping in the bazaars on Wednesday, and he 
“desired’' the troops to be turned out on a Thursday 
On — a — Thursday! The Officer Commanding could not 
well refuse ; for Benira was a Lord. There was an in¬ 
dignation-meeting of subalterns in the Mess Room, to call 
the Colonel pet names. 

“ But the rale dimonstrashin,” saidMulvaney, “was in 
B Comp’ny barrick ; we three headin’ it.” 

Mulvaney climbed on to the refreshment-bar, settled 
himself comfortably by the beer, and went on :—“Whin 
the row was at ut’s foinest an’ B Comp’ny was fur goin’ 
out to murther this man Thrigg on the p’rade-groun’, 
Learoyd here takes up his helmut an’ sez—fwhat was ut 
ye said? ” 

“Ah said,” said Learoyd, “gie us t’brass. Tak oop 
a subscripshun, lads, for to put off t’ p’rade, an’ if 
t’ p’rade’s not put off, ah’ll gie t’ brass back agean. 
Thot’s wot ah said. All B Coomp’ny knawed me. Ah 
took oop a big subscripshun—fower rupees eight annas 
»twas—an’ ah went oot to turn t’ job over. Mulvaney an’ 
Orth’ris coom with me.” 

“ We three raises the Divil in couples gin’rally,” ex¬ 
plained Mulvaney. 

Here Ortheris interrupted. “ ’Ave you read the 
papers ? said he. 

“ Sometimes,” I said. 

“ We ’ad read the papers, an’ we put hup a faked 
decoity, a—a sedukshun.” 

“ ^Mukshin, ye cockney,” said Mulvaney. 

“ ^^>dukshun or sedukshun—no great odds. Any ’ow, 
we arrange to talk an’ put Mister Benhira out o’ the 
way till Thursday was hover, or ’e too busy to rux ’isself 


68 


THE TRHEE MUSKETEERS. 


about p’raids. Hi was the man wot said :—‘ We’ll make 
a few rupees off o’ the business/ ” 

“ We hild a Council av War,” continued Mulvaney 
“ walkin’ roun ’ by the Artill’ry Lines. I was Prisidint, 
Learoyd was Minister av Finance, an’ little Orth’ris here 
was-” 

“A bloomin’ Bismarck ! made the ’ole show pay.” 
“This interferin’bit av a Benira man,” said Mulvaney 
“did the thrick for us himself; for, on me sowl,we hadn’t 
a notion av what was to come afther the next minut. 
He was shoppin’ in the bazar on fut. ’Twas dhrawin’ 
dusk thin, an’ we stud watchin’ the little man hoppin’ in 
an’ out av the shops, thryin to injuce the naygurs to 
niallum his hat. Prisintly, he sthrols up, his arrums full 
av thruck, an’ he sez in a consiquinshal way, shticking 
out his little belly :—‘ Me good men,’ sez he, ‘ have ye 
seen the Kernel’s b'roosh } ’ ‘ B’roosh.? ’ says Learoyd. 
‘There’s no b’roosh here—nobbut o. hekka.* ‘ Fwh-at’s 
that.? ’ sez Thrigg. Learoyd shows him wan down the 
sthreet, an’ he sez :—‘ How thruly Orientil ! I will ride 
on a hekka.’ I saw thin that our Rigimintal Saint was 
for givin’ Thrigg over to us neck an’ brisket. I pur- 

shued a hekka, an’ I sez to the dhriver-divil, I sez_ 

‘ Ye black limb, there’s a Sahib cornin’ for this hekka 
He wants to go jildi to the Padsahi Jhil ’—’twas about 
tu moiles away—, to shoot snipe—cA/rniz. ‘ You dhrive 
Jehannum ke marfik, mallum ? ’Tis no manner av /aider 
hukkin to the Sahib, bekaze he doesn’t samjao your bat. 
Av he holos anything, just you choop and chel. Dekker ? 
Go arsty for the first arder-m\\e from canton mints. Then 
chel, Shaitan ke tnarjiky an the chooper you choops an’ the 
jilder you chels the better kooshy will that Sahib be ; an’ 
here’s a rupee for ye. ’ 

“The hekka-vcvAW knew there was somethin’ out av the 


THE THREE MUSKETEERS. 


69 

common in the air. He grinned and sez :—‘ Bote achee ! 
1 goin’ damn fast.’ I prayed that the Kernel's b’roosh 
WLidn’t arrive till me darlin’ Benira by the grace av God 
was undher weigh. The little man puts his thruck into 
the hekka an’ scuttles in like a fat guinea-pig; niver 
offerin’ us the price of a dhrink for our services in helpin’ 
him home. ‘He’s off to the Padsahi jhil^' sez I to the 
others. ” 

Ortheris took up the tale :— 

“Jist then, little Buldoo kim up, ’00 was the son of 
one of the Artillery Saises —’e would ’av made a ’evinly 
newspaper-boy in London, bein’ sharp and fly to all man¬ 
ner o’ games. ’E ’ad bin watchin’ us puttin’ Mister Ben- 
hira into ’s temportiry baroush, an’ ’e sez :—‘ What 'ave 
you been a doin’ of. Sahibs ? ’ sez ’e. Learoyd ’e caught 
’im by the ear an’ ’e sez—” 

“Ah says,” went on Learoyd: “‘Young mon, that 
mon’s gooin’ to have’t goons out o’ Thursday— kul — an’ 
thot’s more work for you, young mon. Now, sitha, tak 
a tat an’ a lookri, an’ ride tha domdest to t’ Padsahi Jhil. 
Cotch thot there hekka, and tell t’ driver iv your lingo 
thot you’ve coom to tak’ his place. T’ Sahib doesn’t 
speak t’ bat. an’ he’s a little mon. Drive t’ hekka into t’ 
Padsahi Jhil into t’ watter. Leave t’ Sahib theer an’ roon 
hoam; an here’s a rupee for tha.” 

Then Mulvaney and Ortheris spoke together in alter¬ 
nate fragments : Mulvaney leading [You must pick out 
the two speakers as best you can.] :—“ He was a know- 
in’ little divil was Bhuldoo,—’e sez bote achee an’ cuts— 
wid a wink in his oi—but Hi sez there’s money to be 
made—an’ I want to see the end av the campaign—so Hi 
says we’ll double hout to the Padsahi Jhil—and save the 
little man from bein’ dacoited by the murtherin’ Bhuldoo 
—an’ turn hup like reskoors in a Ryle Victoria Theayter 


70 


THE TRHEE MUSKETEERS. 


Melodrama—so we doubled for the jhil, an' prisintly there 
was the divil of a hurroosh behind us an' three bhoys on 
grasscuts’ tats come by, pounding along for the dear life 
—s’elp me Bob, hif Buldoo 'adn't raised a regular harmy 
of decoits—to do the job in shtile. An' we ran, an they 
ran, shplittin' with laughin', till we gets near the jhil — 
and ’ears sounds of distress floatin' molloncally on the 
heavenin' hair." [Ortheris was growing poetical under 
the influence of the beer. The duet recommenced ; 
Mulvaney leading again.] 

“Thin we heard Bhuldoo, the dacoit, shoutin’to the 
hekka man, an’ wan of the young divils brought his lakrt 
down on the top av the hekka-coYQV, an’ Benira Thrigg 
inside howled ‘Murther an' Death.’ Buldoo takes the 
reins and dhrives like mad for the jhil , havin’ dishpersed 
the hekka-(lh.nYer —'oo cum up to us an’ 'e sez, sezie:— 
‘ That Sahib's nigh gawhry with funk ! Wot devil’s work 
'ave you led me into t ^ ‘ Hall right,’ sez we, ‘ yon puck- 

row that there pony an’ come along. This Sahib's been 
decoited, an’ we’re going to resky 'im ! ’ Says the driver : 

‘ Decoits ! Wot decoits.? That’s Buldoo the budmash ' — 
‘Bhuldoo be shot!’ sez we. ‘’Tis a woild dissolute 
Pathan frum the hills. There’s about eight av 'im coercin’ 
the Sahib. You remimber that an’ you’ll get another 
rupee ’! Then we heard the whop-whop-whop av the hekka 
turnin’ over, an’ a splash av water an’ the voice av Benira 
Thrigg callin’ upon God to forgive his sins—an’ Buldoo 
an’ 'is friends squotterin' in the water like boys in the 
Serpentine.’’ 

Here the Three Musketeers retired simultaneously into 
the beer. 

“Well ? What came next.? ’’ said I. 

“ Fwhat nex’.? ’’ answered Mulvaney, wiping his mouth. 
“ Wud you let three bould sodger-bhoys lave the ornamint 


THE THREE MUSKETEERS. 


71 

av the House av Lords to be dhrowned an' dacoited in a 
jhil ? We formed line av quarther-column an’ we desinded 
upon the inimy. For the better part av tin minutes you 
could not hear yerself spake. The tattoo was screamin’ 
in chune wid Benira Thrigg an’ Bhuldoo’s army, an’ the 
shticks was whistlin’ roun’ the hekka, an’ Orth’ris was 
heatin’ the hekka-coYev wid his fistes, an’ Learoyd 
yellin’ :—‘Look out for their knives ! ’ an’ me cuttin’ into 
the dark, right an’ lef, dishpersin’ arrmy corps av Pathans. 
Holy Mother av Moses ! ’twas more disp’rit than Ahmid 
Kheyl wid Maiwund thrown in. Afther a while Bhuldoo 
an’ his bhoys flees. Have ye iver seen a rale live Lord 
thryin’ to hide his nobility undher a fut an’ a half av brown 
;hil wather ? ’Tis the livin’ image av a hhisHs mussick wid 
the shivers. It tuk toime to pershuade me frind Benira he 
was not disimbowilled : an’ more toime to get out the 
hekka. The dhriver come up afther the battle, swearin’ 
he tuk a hand in repulsin’ the inimy. Benira was sick wid 
the fear. We escorted him back, very slow, to canton- 
mints, for that an'the chill to soak into him. It suk! 
Glory be to the Rigimintil Saint, but it suk to the marrow 
av Lord Benira Thrigg ! ” 

Here Ortheris, slowly, with immense pride :—“ ’E sez : 
—‘You har my noble preservers,’ sez ’e. ‘You har a 
honor to the British Harmy,’ sez ’e. With that ’e describes 
the hawful band of decoits wot set on ’im. There was 
about forty of ’em an’ ’e was hoverpowered by numbers, 
so ' e was; but ’e never lost ’is presence of mind, so ’e 
didn’t 'E guv the hekka-driwor five rupees for 'is noble 
hassistance, an’ ’e said ’e would see to us after ’e ’ad 
spoken to the Kernul. For we was a ^onor to the Regi¬ 
ment, we was.” 

“An’ we three,” said Mulvaney, with a seraphic smile, 
“ have dhrawn the par-ti-cu-lar attinshin av Bobs Baha- 


72 


THE THREE MUSKETEERS 


dur more than wanst. But he’s a rale good little man is 
Bobs. Go on, Orth’ris, me son.” 

“Then we leaves ’im at the Kernul’s 'ouse, werry 
sick, an’ we cuts over to B. Comp’ny barrick an^ we 
sez we ’ave saved Benira from a bloody doom, an’ the 
chances was agin there bein’ p’raid on Thursday. About 
ten minutes later come three envelicks, one for each of 
us. S’elp me Bob, if the old bloke ’adn’t guv us a fiver 
apiece—sixty-four dibs in the bazaar ! On Thursday ’e 
was in ’orspital recoverin’ from’s sanguinary encounter 
with a gang of Pathans, an’ B Comp’ny was drinkin’ ’em- 
selves inter clink by squads. So there never was no 
Thursday p’raid. But the Kernul, when ’e ’eard of our 
galliant conduct, ’e sez :—‘ Hi know there’s been some 
devilry somewheres,’ sez ’e, ‘ but hi can’t bring it ’ome 
to you three. ’ ” 

“An’ my privit imprisshin is,” said Mulvaney, getting 
off the bar and turning his glass upside down, “that, 
av they had known they wudn’t have brought ut home. 
’Tis flyin’in the face, firstly av Nature, second, av the 
Rig’lations, an’ third, the will av Terence Mulvaney, to 
hold p’rades av Thursdays.” 

“Good, ma son!” said Learoyd; “but, young mon, 
what’s t’ notebook for.? ” 

“Let be,” said Mulvaney; “this time next month 
we’re in the Sherapis. ‘Tis immortial fame the gentle¬ 
man’s goin’ to give us. But kape it dhark till we’re out 
av the range av me little frind Bobs Bahadur.” 

And I have obeyed Mulvaney’s order. 


HIS CHANCE IN LIFE, 


73 


HIS CHANCE IN LIFE. 

Then a pile of heads be laid— 

Thirty thousand heaped on high— 

All to please the Kafir maid, 

Where the Oxus ripples by. 

Grimly spake Atulla Khan :— 

“ Love hath made this thing a Man.” 

Oatta's Story, 

If you go straight away from Levees and Govern 
ment House Lists, past Trades’ Balls—far beyond every¬ 
thing and everybody you ever knew in your respectable 
life—you cross, in time, the Border line where the last 
drop of White blood ends and the full tide of Black 
sets in. It would be easier to talk to a new made 
Duchess on the spur of the moment than to the Bor¬ 
derline folk without violating some of their conventions 
or hurting their feelings. The Black and the White 
mix very quaintly in their ways. Sometimes the White 
shows in spurts of fierce, childish pride—which is Pride 
of Race run crooked—and sometimes the Black in still 
fiercer abasement and humility, half-heathenish customs 
and strange, unaccountable impulses to crime. One of 
these days, this people—understand they are far lower 
than the class whence Derozio, the man who imitated 
Byron, sprung—will turn out a writer or a poet; and 
then we shall know how they live and what they feel. 
In the meantime, any stories about them cannot be abso¬ 
lutely correct in fact or inference. 

Miss Vezzis came from across the Borderline to look 


HIS CHANCE IN LIFE, 


74 

after some children who belonged to a lady until a regu¬ 
larly ordained nurse could come out. The lady said 
Miss Vezzis was a bad, dirty nurse and inattentive. It 
never struck her that Miss Vezzis had her own life to lead 
and her own affairs to worry over, and that these affairs 
were the most important things in the world to Miss 
Vezzis. Very few mistresses admit this sort of reasoning. 
Miss Vezzis was as black as a boot and, to our standard 
of taste, hideously ugly. She wore cotton-print gowns 
and bulged shoes ; and when she lost her temper with 
the children, she abused them in the language of the 
Borderline—which is part English, part Portuguese, and 
part Native. She was not attractive ; but she had her 
pride, and she preferred being called “Miss Vezzis.” 

Every Sunday, she dressed herself wonderfully and 
went to see her Mamma, who lived, for the most part, 
on an old cane chair in a greasy iussur-siV^ dressing- 
gown and a big rabbit-warren of a house full of Vezzises, 
Pereiras, Ribieras, Lisboas and Gonsalveses, and a float¬ 
ing population of loafers ; besides fragments of the day's 
bazar, garlic, stale incense, clothes thrown on the floor, 
petticoats hung on strings for screens, old bottles, pewter 
crucifixes, d^ied hnmorIdles, pariah puppies, plaster im¬ 
ages of the Virgin, and hats without crowns. Miss Vezzis 
drew twenty rupees a month for acting as nurse, and she 
squabbled weekly with her Mamma as to the percentage 
to be given towards housekeeping. When the quarrel 
was over, Michele D’Cruze used to shamble across the 
low mud wall of the compound and make love to Miss 
Vezzis after the fashion of the Borderline, which is hedged 
about with much ceremony. Michele was a poor, sickly 
weed and very black ; but he had his pride. He would 
not be seen smoking a huqa for anything ; and he looked 
down on natives as only a man with seven-eighths native 


ms CHANCE IN LIFE. 


75 

blood in his veins can. The Nqzyas, Family had their 
pride too. They traced their descent from a mythical 
platelayer -who had worked on the Sone Bridge when 
railways were new in India, and they valued their English 
origin. Michele was a Telegraph Signaller on Rs. 35 a 
month. The fact that he was in Government employ 
made Mrs. Vezzis lenient to the shortcomings of his 
ancestors. 

There was a compromising legend—Dom Anna the 
tailor brought it from Poonani—that a black Jew of Cochii# 
had once married into the D’Cruze family ; while it was 
an open secret that an uncle of Mrs. D’Cruze was, at that 
very time, doing menial work, connected with cooking, 
for a Club in Southern India! He sent Mrs. D’Cruze 
seven rupees eight annas a month ; but she felt the dis¬ 
grace to the family very keenly all the same. 

However, in the course of a few Sundays, Mrs. Vezzis 
brought herself to overlook these blemishes and gave 
her consent to the marriage of her daughter with 
Michele, on condition that Michele should have at least 
fifty rupees a month to start married life upon. This 
wonderful prudence must have been a lingering touch 
of the mythical plate-layer's Yorkshire ''blood ; for 
across the Borderline people take a pride in marrying 
when they please—not when they can. 

Having regard to his departmental prospects. Miss 
Vezzis might as well have asked Michele to go away and 
come back with the Moon in his pocket. But Michele 
was deeply in love with Miss Vezzis, and that helped him 
to endure. He accompanied Miss Vezzis to Mass one 
Sunday, and after Mass, walking home through the hot 
stale dust with her hand in his, he swore by several Saints 
whose names would not interest you, never to forget Miss 
Vezzis ; and she swore bv her Honor and the Saints—th« 


his CHANCE IN LIFE. 


76 

oath runs rather curiously; In nomine Sanctissimce —” 
(whatever the name of the she-Saint is) and so forth, 
ending with a kiss on the forehead, a kiss on the left 
cheek, and a kiss on the mouth—never to forget Michele. 

Next week Michele was transferred, and Miss Vezzis 
dropped tears upon the window-sash of the “Intermedi¬ 
ate” compartment as he left the Station. 

If you look at the telegraph-map of India you will see 
a long line skirting the coast from Backergunge to Madras. 
Michele was ordered to Tibasu, a little Sub-office one- 
third down this line, to send messages on from Berham- 
pur to Chicacola, and to think of Miss Vezzis and his 
chances of getting fifty rupees a month out of office-hours. 
He had the noise of the Bay of Bengal and a Bengali Babu 
foi company; nothing more. He sent foolish letters, 
with crosses tucked inside the flaps of the envelopes, to 
Miss Vezzis. 

When he had been at Tibasu for nearly three weeks his 
chance came. 

Never forget that unless the outward and visible signs 
of Our Authority are always before a native he is as in¬ 
capable as a child of understanding what authority means, 
or where is the danger of disobeying it. Tibasu was a 
forgotten little place with a few Orissa Mahomedans in it. 
These, hearing nothing of the Collector-6’a/z/Z> for some 
time and heartily despising the Hindu Sub-Judge, arranged 
to start a little Mohurrum riot of their own. But the Hin¬ 
dus turned out and broke their heads ; when, finding law¬ 
lessness pleasant, Hindus and Mahomedans together 
raised an aimless sort of Donnybrook just to see h®w far 
they could go. They looted each others’ shops, and paid 
off private grudges in the regular way. It was a nasty 
little riot, but not worth putting in the newspapers. 

Michele was working in his office when he heard the 


ms CHANCE IN LIFE. 


77 

sound that a man never forgets all his life—the **ah-yah ” 
of an angry crowd. [When that sound drops about three 
tones, and changes to a thick, droning w/, the man who 
hears it had better go away if he is alone.] The Native 
Police Inspector ran in and told Michele that the town 
was in an uproar and coming to wreck the Telegraph 
Office. The Babu put on his cap and quietly dropped out 
of the window; while the Police Inspector, afraid, but 
obeying the old race-instinct which recognizes a drop of 
White blood as far as it can be diluted, said:—“What 
orders does the Sahib give.?” 

The “ Sakib ” decided Michele. Though horribly fright¬ 
ened, he felt that, for the hour, he, the man with the Co¬ 
chin Jew and the menial uncle in his pedigree, was the 
only representative of English authority in the place. 
Then he thought of Miss Vezzis and the fifty rupees; and 
took the situation on himself. There were seven na¬ 
tive policemen in Tibasu, and four crazy smooth-bore 
muskets among them. All the men were gray with fear, 
but not beyond leading. Michele dropped the key of 
the telegraph instrument, and went out, at the head of his 
army, to meet the mob. As the shouting crew came 
round a corner of the road, he dropped and fired ; the 
men behind him loosing instinctively at the same time. 

The whole crowd—curs to the back-bone—yelled and 
ran ; leaving one man dead, and another dying in the 
road. Michele was sweating with fear ; but he kept his 
weakness under, and went down into the town, past the 
house where the Sub-Judge had barricaded himself. The 
streets were empty. Tibasu was more frightened than 
Michele, for the mob had been taken at the right time. 

Michele returned to the Telegraph-Office, and sent a 
message to Chicacola asking for help. Before an answer 
came, he received a deputation of the elders of Tibasu, 


HIS CHANCE IN LIFE, 


78 

telling him that the Sub-Judge said his actions generally 
were “unconstitutional,” and trying to bully him. But 
the heart of Michele D’Cruze was big and white in his 
breast, because of his love for Miss Vezzis, the nurse- 
girl, and because he had tasted for the first time Respon¬ 
sibility and Success. Those two make an intoxicating 
drink, and have ruined more men than ever has 
Whiskey. Michele answered that the Sub-Judge might 
say what he pleased, but, until the Assistant Collector 
came, the Telegraph Signaller was the Government of 
India in Tibasu, and the elders of the town would be 
held accountable for further rioting. Then they bowed 
their heads and said :—“ Show mercy ! ” or words to that 
effect, and went back in great fear ; each accusing the 
other of having begun the rioting. 

Early in the dawn, after a night's patrol with his seven 
policemen, Michele went down the road, musket in hand, 
to meet the Assistant Collector who had ridden in to 
quell Tibaru. But, in the presence of this young Eng¬ 
lishman, M'chele felt himself slipping back more and 
more into the native , and the tale of the Tibasu Riots 
ended, with the strain on the teller, in an hysterical out- 
burr t of tears, bred by sorrow that he had killed a man, 
shame that he could not feel as uplifted as he had felt 
through the night, and childish anger that his tongue 
could not do justice to his great deeds. It was the White 
drop in Michele’s v.ins dying out, though he did not 
know it. 

But the Englishman understood ; and, after he had 
schooled those men of Tibasu, and had conferred with 
the Sub-Judge till that excellent official turned green, 
he found time to draught an official letter describing the 
conduct of Michele. Which letter filtered through the 
Proper Channels, and ended in the transfer of Michele 


HIS CHANCE IN LIFE. 


79 

up-country once more, on the Imperial salary of sixty 
six rupees a month. 

So he and Miss Vezzis were married with great state 
and ancientry ; and now there are several little D’Cruzes 
sprawling about the verandahs of the Central Telegraph 
Office. 

But, if the whole revenue of the Department he serves 
were to be his reward, Michele could never, never repeat 
what he did at Tibasu for the sake of Miss Vezzis the 
nurse-girl. 

Which proves that, when a man does good work out 
of all proportion to his pay, in seven cases out of nine 
there is a woman at the back of the virtue. 

The two exceptions must have suffered from sun¬ 
stroke. 


8 o 


WArCJ/ES OF rilE NIGHT 


WATCHES OF THE NIGHT. 

What is in the Brahmin’s books that is in the Brahmin’s heart. 

Neither you nor I knew there was so much evil in the world. 

Hindu Proverb. 

This began in a practical joke; but it has gone far 
enough now, and is getting serious. 

Platte, the Subaltern, being poor, had a Waterbury 
watch and a plain leather guard. 

The Colonel had a Waterbury watch also, and for 
guard, the lip-strap of a curb-chain. Lip-straps make 
the best watch guards. They are strong and short. 
Between a lip-strap and an ordinary leather guard there 
is no great difference; between one Waterbury watch 
and another none at all. Everyone in the station knew 
the Colonel’s lip-strap. He was not a horsey man, but 
he liked people to believe he had been one once; and he 
wove fantastic stories of the hunting-bridle to which this 
particular lip-strap had belonged. Otherwise he was 
painfully religious. 

Platte and the Colonel were dressing at the Club—both 
late for their engagements, and both in a hurry. That 
was Kismet. The two watches were on a shelf below 
the looking-glass—guards hanging down. That was 
carelessness. Platte changed first, snatched a watch 
looked in the glass, settled his tie, and ran. Forty 
seconds later, the Colonel did exactly the same thing; 
each man taking the other’s watch. 


WATCHES OF THE NIGHT, 


8 l 


You may have noticed that many religious people are 
deeply suspicious. They seem—for purely religious pur¬ 
poses, of course—to know more about iniquity than the 
Unregenerate. Perhaps they were specially bad before they 
became converted ! At any rate, in the imputation of 
things evil, and in putting the worst construction on things 
innocent, a certain type of good people may be trusted to 
surpass all others. The Colonel and his Wife were of that 
type. But the Colonel’s wife was the worst. She manu¬ 
factured the Station scandal, and —talked to her ayah I 
Nothing more need be said. The Colonel’s Wife broke 
up the Laplace’s home. The Colonel’s Wife stopped the 
Ferris-Haughtrey engagement. The Colonel’s Wife in¬ 
duced young Buxton to keep his wife down in the Plains 
through the first year of the marriage. Whereby little Mrs. 
Buxton died, and the baby with her. These things will 
be remembered against the Colonel’s Wife so long as there 
is a regiment in the country. 

But to come back to the Colonel and Platte. They went 
their several ways from the dressing-room. The Colonel 
dined with two Chaplains, while Platte went to a bachelor- 
party, and whist to follow. 

Mark how things happen ! If Platte’s sais had put the 
new saddle-pad on the mare, the butts of the territs would 
not have worked through the worn leather and the old pad 
into the mare’s withers, when she was coming home at 
two o’clock in the morning. She would not have reared, 
bolted, fallen into a ditch, upset the cart, and sent Platte 
flying over an aloe-hedge on to Mrs. Larkyn’s well-kept 
lawn; and this tale would never have been written. But 
the mare did all these things, and while Platte was rolling 
over and over on the turf, like a shot rabbit, the watch 
and guard flew from his waistcoat—as an Infantry Major’s 
sword hops out of the scabbard when they are firing a/eu 


82 


WATCHES OF THE NIGHT 


de joie —and rolled and rolled in the moonlight, till it stop¬ 
ped under a window. 

Platte stuffed his handkerchief under the pad, put the cart 
straight, and went home. 

Mark again how Kismet works ! This would not hap¬ 
pen once in a hundred years. Towards the end of his 
dinner with the two Chaplains, the Colonel let out his 
waistcoat and leaned over the table to look at some Mis¬ 
sion Reports. The bar of the watch-guard worked 
through the buttonhole, and the watch—Platte’s watch— 
slid quietly on to the carpet. Where the bearer found it 
next morning and kept it. 

Then the Colonel went home to the wife of his bosom ; 
but the driver of the carriage was drunk and lost his way. 
So the Colonel returned at an unseemly hour and his ex¬ 
cuses were not accepted. If the Colonel’s Wife had been 
an ordinary “vessel of wrath appointed for destruction,” 
she would have known that when a man stays aways on 
purpose, his excuse is always sound and original. The 
very baldness of the Colonel’s explanation proved its 
truth. 

See once more the workings ot Kismet / The 
Colonel’s watch which came with Platte hurriedly on 
to Mrs. Larkyn’s lawn, chose to stop just under Mrs. 
Larkyn’s window, where she saw it early in the morn¬ 
ing, recognized it, and picked it up. She had heard the 
crash of Platte’s cart at two o’clock that morning, and 
his voice calling the mare names. She knew Platte and 
liked him. That day she showed him the watch and 
heard his story. He put his head on one side, winked 
and said:—“How disgusting! Shocking old man! 
With his religious training, too ! I should send the 
watch to the Colonel’s Wife and ask for explanations.” 

Mrs. Larkyn thought for a minute of the Laplaces— 


WATCHES OF THE NIGHT 


«3 

whom she had known when Laplace and his wife 
believed in each other—and answered:—‘‘I will send 
it. I think it will do her good. But, remember, we 
must never tell her the truth/’ 

Platte guessed that his own watch was in the Colonel’s 
possession, and thought that the return of the lip-strapped 
Waterbury with a soothing note from Mrs. Larkyn, would 
merely create a small trouble for a few minutes. Mrs. 
Larkyn knew better. She knew that any poison dropped 
would find good holding-ground in the heart of the 
Colonel’s Wife. 

The packet, and a note containing a few remarks on 
the Colonel’s calling-hours, were sent over to the Col¬ 
onel’s Wife, who wept in her own room and took counsel 
with herself. 

If there was one woman under Heaven whom the 
Colonel’s Wife hated with holy fervor, it was Mrs. Larkyn. 
Mrs. Larkyn was a frivolous lady, and called the Col¬ 
onel’s Wife “ old cat.” The Colonel’s Wife said that some¬ 
body in Revelations was remarkably like Mrs. Larkyn. 
She mentioned other Scripture people as well. From the 
Old Testament. [But the Colonel’s Wife was the only 
person who cared or dared to say anything against Mrs. 
Larkyn. Eveiy one else accepted her as an amusing, 
honest little body.] Wherefore, to believe that her hus¬ 
band had been shedding watches under that “ Thing’s ” 
window at ungodly hours, coupled with the fact of his 
late arrival on the previous night, was. 

At this point she rose up and sought her husband. He 
denied everything except the ownership of the watch. 
She besought him, for his Soul’s sake to speak the truth. 
He denied afresh, with two bad words. Then a stony 
silence held the Colonel’s Wife, while a man could draw 
his breath five times. 



84 


WATCHES OF THE NIGHT. 


The speech that followed is no affair of mine or yours. 
It was made up of wifely and womanly jealousy; knowl¬ 
edge of old age and sunk cheeks ; deep mistrust born ol 
the text that says even little babies’ hearts are as bad as 
they make them ; rancorous hatred of Mrs. Larkyn, and 
the tenets of the creed of the Colonel’s Wife’s upbringing. 

Over and above all, was the damning lip-strapped 
Waterbury, ticking away in the palm of her shaking, 
withered hand. At that hour, I think, the Colonel’s 
Wife realized a little of the restless suspicion she had 
injected into old Laplace’s mind, a little of poor Miss 
Haughtrey’s misery, and some of the canker that ate 
into Buxton’s heart as he watched his wife dying before 
his eyes. The Colonel stammered and tried to explain. 
Then he remembered that his watch had disappeared ; 
and the mystery grew greater. The Colonel’s Wife talked 
and prayed by turns till she was tired, and went away 
to devise means for ‘'chastening the stubborn heart of 
her husband.” Which, translated, means, in our slang, 
“tail-twisting. ” 

You see, being deeply impressed with the doctrine of 
Original Sin, she could not believe in the face of appear¬ 
ances. She knew too much, and jumped to the wildest 
conclusions. 

But it was good for her. It spoilt her life, as she had 
spoilt the life of the Laplaces. She had lost her faith in 
the Colonel, and—here the creed-suspicion came in—he 
might, she argued, have erred many times, before a mer¬ 
ciful Providence, at the hands of so unworthy an instru¬ 
ment as Mrs. Larkyn, had established his guilt. He 
was a bad, wicked, gray-haired profligate. This may 
sound too sudden a revulsion for a long-wedded wife ; 
but it is a venerable fact that, if a man or woman makes 
a practice of, and takes a delight in, believing and 


WATCHES OF THE NIGHT. 


85 

spreading evil of people indifferent to him or her, he 01 
she will end in believing evil of folk very near and dear. 
You may think, also, that the mere incident of the watch 
was too small and trivial to raise this misunderstanding. 
It is another aged fact that, in life as well as racing, all 
the worst accidents happen at little ditches and cut-down 
fences. In the same way, you sometimes see a woman 
who would have made a Joan of Arc in another century 
and climate, threshing herself to pieces over all the mean 
worry of housekeeping. But that is another story. 

Her belief only made the Colonel’s Wife more wretch¬ 
ed, because it insisted so strongly on the villainy of men. 
Remembering what she had done, it was pleasant to 
watch her unhappiness, and the penny-farthing attempts 
she made to hide it from the Station. But the Station 
knew and laughed heartlessly ; for they had heard the 
story of the watch, with much dramatic gesture, from Mrs. 
Larkyn’s lips. 

Once or twice Platte said to Mrs. Larkyn, seeing that 
the Colonel had not cleared himself:—“This thing has 
gone far enough. I move we tell the Colonel’s Wife how 
it happened.” Mrs. Larkyn shut her lips and shook her 
head, and vowed that the Colonel’s Wife must bear her 
punishment as best she could. Now Mrs. Larkyn was a 
frivolous woman, in whom none would have suspected 
deep hate. So Platte took no action, and came to believe 
gradually, from the Colonel’s silence, that the Colonel 
must have “run off the line” somewhere that night, and, 
therefore, preferred to stand sentence on the lesser count 
of rambling into other people’s compounds out of calling- 
hours. Platte forgot about the watch business after a 
while, and moved down-country with his regiment. Mrs. 
Larkyn went home when her husband’s tour of Indian 
service expired. She never forgot. 


86 


W^ATCHES OF THE NIGHT. 


But Platte was quite right when he said that the joke 
had gone too far. The mistrust and the tragedy of it 
—which we outsiders cannot see and do not believe in 
—are killing the Colonel’s Wife, and are making the Col¬ 
onel wretched. If either of them read this story, they 
can depend upon its being a fairly true account of the 
case, and can, “ kiss and make friends.” 

Shakespeare alludes to the pleasure of watching an 
Engineer being shelled by his own Battery. Now this 
shows that poets should not write about what they do 
not understand. Anyone could have told him that Sap¬ 
pers and Gunners are perfectly different branches of 
the Service. But, if you correct the sentence, and sub¬ 
stitute Gunner for Sapper, the moral comes just the 
same. 


THE OTHER MAN. 


87 


THE OTHER MAN. 

When the earth was sick and the skies were gray. 

And the woods were rotted with rain, 

The Dead Man rode through the autumn day 
To visit his love again. 

Old Ballad. 

Far back in the “seventies,” before they had built 
any Public-Offices at Simla, and the broad road round 
Jakko lived in a pigeon-hole in the P. W. D. hovels, 
her parents made Miss Gaurey marry Colonel Schrieder- 
ling. He could not have been much more than thirty- 
five years her senior ; and, as he lived on two hundred 
rupees a month and had money of his own, he was 
well off. He belonged to good people, and suffered in 
the cold weather from lung-complaints. In the hot 
weather he dangled on the brink of heat-apoplexy ; but 
it never quite killed him. 

Understand, I do not blame Schreiderling. He was a 
good husband according to his lights, and his temper 
only failed him when he was being nursed. Which was 
some seventeen days in each month. He was almost 
generous to his wife about money-matters, and that, for 
him, was a concession. Still Mrs. Schreiderling was not 
happy. They married her when she was this side of 
twenty and had given all her poor little heart to another 
man. I have forgotten his name, but we will call him 
the Other Man. He had no money and no prospects. 
He was not even good-looking; and I think he 


88 


THE OTHER MAN. 


was in the Commissariat or Transport But, in spite of 
all these things, she loved him very badly; and there 
was some sort of an engagement between the two when 
Schreiderling appeared and told Mrs. Gaurey that he 
wished to marry her daughter. Then the other engage¬ 
ment was broken off—washed away by Mrs. Gaurey’s 
tears, for that lady governed her house by weeping over 
disobedience to her authority and the lack of reverence 
she received in her old age. The daughter did not take 
after her mother. She never cried. Not even at the 
wedding. 

The Other Man bore his loss quietly, and was trans¬ 
ferred to as bad a station as he could find. Perhaps the 
climate consoled him. He suffered from intermittent 
fever, and that may have distracted him from his other 
trouble. He was weak about the heart also. Both ways. 
One of the valves was affected, and the fever made it 
worse. This showed itself later on. 

Then many months passed, and Mrs. Schreiderling took 
to being ill. She did not pine away like people in story 
books, but she seemed to pick up every form of illness 
that went about a station, from simple fever upwards. 
She was never more than ordinarily pretty at the best of 
times; and the illness made her ugly. Schreiderling 
said so. He prided himself on speaking his mind. 

When she ceased being pretty, he left her to her own 
devices, and went back to the lairs of his bachelordom. 
She used to trot up and down Simla Mall in a forlorn sort 
of way, with a grayTerai hat well on the back of her head, 
and a shocking bad saddle under her. Schreiderling’s 
generosity stopped at the horse. He said that any saddle 
would do for a woman as nervous as Mrs. Schreider¬ 
ling. She never was asked to dance, because she did not 
dance well; and she was so dull and uninteresting, that 


THE OTHER MAN. 


89 

her box very seldom had any cards in it Schreiderling 
said that if he had known that she was going to be such 
a scare-crow after her marriage, he would never have 
married her. He always prided himself on speaking his 
mind, did Schreiderling! 

He left her at Simla one August, and went down to his 
regiment Then she revived a little, but she never recov¬ 
ered her looks. I found out at the Club that the Other 
Man is coming up sick—very sick—on an off chance of 
recovery. The fever and the heart-valves had nearly 
killed him. She knew that too, and she knew—what I 
had no interest in knowing—when he was coming up. I 
suppose he wrote to tell her. They had not Seen each 
other since a month before the wedding. And here comes 
the unpleasant part of the story. 

A late call kept me down at the Dovedell Hotel till 
dusk one evening. Mrs. Schreiderling had been flitting 
up and down the Mall all the afternoon in the rain. 
Coming up along the Cart-road, a tonga passed me, and 
my pony, tired with standing so long, set off at a canter. 
Just by the road down to the Tonga Office Mrs. Schreid¬ 
erling, dripping from head to foot, was waiting for 
the tonga. I turned up-hill, as the tonga was no affair 
of mine ; and just then she began to shriek. I went 
back at once and saw, under the Tonga Office lamps, 
]\Irs. Schreiderling kneeling in the wet road by the 
the back seat of the newly-arrived tonga, screaming 
hideously. Then she fell face down in the dirt as I 
came up. 

Sitting in the back seat, very square and firm, with one 
hand on the awning-stanchion and the wet pouring off his 
hat and moustache, was the Other Man—dead. The 
sixty-m.ile up-hill jolt had been too much for his valve, I 
suppose. The tonga-driver said :—“ This Sahib died two 


THE OTHER MAN. 


90 

stages out of Solon. Therefore, I tied him with a rope, 
lest he should fall out by the way, and so came to Simla. 
Will the Sahib give me bukshish P Ity’ pointing to the 
Other Man, “ should have given one rupee.” 

The Other Man sat with a grin on his face, as if he 
enjoyed the joke of his arrival; and Mrs. Schreiderling, 
in the mud, began to groan. There was no one except us 
four in the office and it was raining heavily. The first 
thing was to take Mrs. Schriederling home, and the 
second was to prevent her name from being mixed up 
with the affair. The tonga-driver received five rupees 
to find a bazar ’rickshaw for Mrs. Schreiderling. He was 
to tell the Tonga Babu afterwards of the Other Man, and 
the Babu was to make such arrangements as seemed best. 

Mrs. Schreiderling was carried into the shed out of the 
rain, and for three-quarters of an hour we two waited for 
the ’rickshaw. The Other Man was left exactly as he had 
arrived. Mrs. Schreiderling would do everything but cry, 
which might have helped her. She tried to scream as 
soon as her senses came back, and, then she began 
praying for the Other Man’s soul. Had she not been as 
honest as the day, she would have prayed for her own 
soul too. I waited to hear her do this, but she did not. 
Then I tried to get some of the mud off her habit. Lastly, 
the ’rickshaw came, and I got her away—partly by force. 
It was a terrible business from beginning to end ; but 
most of all when the ’rickshaw had to squeeze between 
the wall and the tonga, and she saw by the lamp-ligffi 
that thin, yellow hand grasping the awning-stanchion. 

She was taken home just as everyone was going to a 
dance at Viceregal Lodge—“ Peterhoff ” it was then—and 
the doctor found out that she had fallen from her horse, 
that I had picked her up at the back of Jakko, and really 
deserved great credit for the prompt manner in which I 


THE OTHER MAH. 


91 

had secured medical aid. She did not die—men of 
Schreiderling's stamp marry woman who don’t die easily. 
They live and grow ugly. 

She never told of her one meeting, since her marriage, 
with the Other Man; and, when the chill and cough 
following the exposure of that evening, allowed her 
abroad, she never by word or sign alluded to having met 
me by the Tonga Office. Perhaps she never knew. 

She used to trot up and down the Mall, on that shock¬ 
ing bad saddle, looking as if she expected to meet some 
one round the corner every minute. Two years after¬ 
ward, she went Home, and died—at Bournemouth, I 
think. 

Schreiderling, when he grew maudlin at Mess, used to 
talk about “my poor dear wife.'’ He always set great 
store on speaking his mind, did Schreiderling 1 


92 


CONSEQUENCES. 


CONSEQUENCES. 

Rosicrucian subtleties 
In the Orient had rise; 

Ye may find their teachers still 
Under Jacatala’s Hill. 

Seek ye Bombast Paracelsus, 

Read what Flood the Seeker tells us 
Of the Dominant that runs 
Through the cycles of the Suns— 

Read my story last and see 
Luna at her apogee. 

There are yearly appointments, and two-yearly ap¬ 
pointments, and five-yearly appointments at Simla, and 
there are, or used to be, permanent appointments, whereon 
you stayed up for the term of your natural life and secured 
red cheeks and a nice income. Of course, you could de¬ 
scend in the cold weather ; for Simla is rather dull then. 

Tarrion came from goodness knows where—all away 
and away in some forsaken part of Central India, where 
they call Pachmari a “Sanitarium,” and drive behind 
trotting bullocks, I believe. He belonged to a regiment; 
but what he really wanted to do was to escape from his 
regiment and live in Simla forever and ever. He had no 
preference for anything in particular, beyond a good 
horse and a nice partner. He thought he could do every¬ 
thing well ; which is a beautiful belief when you hold it 
with all your heart. He was clever in many ways, and 
good to look at, and always made people round him com¬ 
fortable—even in Central India. 

So he went up to Simla, and, because he was clever 
and amusing, he gravitated naturally to Mrs. Hauksbee, 


CONSEQUENCES. 


93 

who could forgive everything but stupidity. Once he did 
her great service by changing the date on an invitation- 
card for a big dance which Mrs. Hauksbee wished to 
attend, but couldn’t because she had quarrelled with the 
A.-D.-C., who took care, being a mean man, to invite her 
to a small dance on the 6th instead of the big Ball of the 
26th. It was a very clever piece of forgery ; and when 
Mrs. Hauksbee showed the A.-D.-C. her invitation-card, 
and chaffed him mildly for not better managing his ven¬ 
dettas, he really thought that he had made a mistake ; and 
—which was wise—realized that it was no use to fight 
with Mrs. Hauksbee. She was grateful to Tarrion and 
asked what she could do for him. He said simply : “ I’m 
a Freelance up here on leave, on the look out for what I 
can loot. I haven’t a square inch of interest in all Simla. 
My name isn’t known to any man with an appointment 
in his gift, and I want an appointment—a good, sound, 
pukka one. 1 believe you can do anything you turn your¬ 
self to. Will you help me ? ” Mrs. Hauksbee thought for a 
minute, and passed the lash of her riding-whip through 
her lips, as wast her custom when thinking. Then her eyes 
sparkled and she said:—“I will;” and she shook 
hands on it. Tarrion, having perfect confidence in this 
great woman, took no further thought of the business 
at all. Except to wonder what sort of an appointment 
he would win. 

Mrs. Hauksbee began calculating the prices of all the 
Heads of Departments and Members of Council she 
knew, and the more she thought the more she laughed, 
because her heart was in the game and it amused her. 
Then she took a Civil List and ran over a few of the 
appointments. There are some beautiful appointments 
in the Civil List. Eventually, she decided that 'though 
Tarrion was too good for the Political Department, she 


CONSEQUENCES. 


94 

had better begin by trying to get him in there. What 
were her own plans to this end, does not matter in the 
least, for Luck or Fate played into her hands and she 
had nothing to do but to watch the course of events and 
take the credit of them. 

All Viceroys, when they first come out, pass through 
the “ Diplomatic Secrecy” craze. It wears off in time ; 
but they all catch it in the beginning, because they are 
new to the country. The particular Viceroy who was 
suffering from the complaint just then—this was a long 
time ago, before Lord Dufferin ever came from Canada, 
or Lord Ripon from the bosom of the English Church— 
had it very badly ; and the result was that men who 
were new to keeping official secrets went about looking 
unhappy; and the Viceroy plumed himself on the way 
in which he had instilled notions of reticence into his 
Staff. 

Now, the Supreme Government have a careless custom 
of committing what they do to printed papers. These 
papers deal with all sorts of things—from the payment 
of Rs. 200 to a “ secret service ” native, up to rebukes 
administered to Vakils and Motamids of Native States, 
and rather brusque letters to Native Princes, telling 
them to put their houses in order, to refrain from 
kidnapping women, or filling offenders with pounded 
red pepper, and eccentricities of that kind. Of course, 
these things could never be made public, because Native 
Princes never err officially, and their States are, offi¬ 
cially as well administered as Our territories. Also, the 
private allowances to various queer people are not 
exactly matters to put into newspapers, though they 
give quaint reading sometimes. When the Supreme 
Government is at Simla, these papers are prepared there, 
and go round to the people who ought to see them in 


CONSEQ UENCES. 


95 


office-boxes or by post. The principle of secrecy was 
to that Viceroy quite as important as the practice, and 
he held that a benevolent despotism like Ours should 
never allow even little things such as appointments of 
subordinate clerks, to leak out till the proper time. 
He was always remarkable for his principles. 

There was a very important batch of papers in prep¬ 
aration at that time. It had to travel from one end of 
Simla to the other by hand. It was not put into an 
official envelope, but a large, square, pale-pink one ; the 
matter being in MS. on soft crinkley paper. It was 
addressed to ‘‘ The Head Clerk, etc., etc.’' Now, between 

The Head Clerk, etc., etc.” and Mrs. Hauksbee ” and 
a flourish, is no very great difference, if the address be 
written in a very bad hand, as this was. The chaprassi 
who took the envelope was not more of an idiot than 
most chrapassis. He merely forgot where this most un¬ 
official cover was to be delivered, and so asked the first 
Englishman he met, who happened to be a man riding 
down to Ann an dale in a great hurry. The Englishman 
hardly looked, said : Haueshee Sahib kiMem,'’ and went 
on. So did the chaprassi, because that letter was the last 
in stock and he wanted to get his work over. There was 
no book to sign ; he thrust the letter into Mrs. Hauksbee’s 
bearer’s hands and went off to smoke with a friend. Mrs. 
Hauksbee was expecting some cut-out pattern things in 
flimsy paper from a friend. As soon as she got the big 
square packet, therefore, she said, “Oh, the dear crea¬ 
ture ! ” and tore it open with a paper-knife, and all the 
MS. enclosures tumbled out on the floor. 

Mrs. Hauksbee began reading. I have said the batch 
was rather important. That is quite enough for you to 
know. It referred to some correspondence, two meas¬ 
ures, a peremptory order to a native chief and two dozen 


CONSEQUENCES. 


96 

other things. Mrs. Hauksbee gasped as she read, for the 
first glimpse of the naked machinery of the Great Indian 
Government, stripped of its casings, and lacquer, and 
paint, and guard-rails, impresses even the most stupid 
man. And Mrs. Hauksbee was a clever woman. She 
was a little afraid at first, and felt as if she had laid hold 
of a lightning-flash by the tail, and did not quite know 
what to do with it. There were remarks and initials at 
the side of the papers ; and some of the remarks were 
rather more severe than the papers. The initials belonged 
to men who are all dead or gone now ; but they were 
great in their day. Mrs. Hauksbee read on and thought 
calmly as she read. Then the value of her trove struck 
her, and she cast about for the best method of using it 
Then Tarrion dropped in, and they read through all the 
papers together, and Tarrion, not knowing how she had 
come by them, vowed that Mrs. Hauksbee was the great¬ 
est woman on earth. Which I believe was true, or nearly 
so. 

“The honest course is always the best,” said Tarrion 
after an hour and a half of study and conversation. “All 
things considered, the Intelligence Branch is about my 
form. Either that or the Foreign Office. I go to lay 
siege to the High Gods in their Temples.” 

He did not seek a little man, or a little big man, or 
a weak Head of a strong Department, but he called on 
the biggest and strongest man that the Government 
owned, and explained that he wanted an appointment 
at Simla on a good salary. The compound insolence 
of this amused the Strong Man, and, as he had nothing 
to do for the moment, he listened to the proposals of 
the audacious Tarrion. “You have, I presume, some 
special qualifications, besides the gift of self-assertion, 
for the claims you put forward?” said the Strong Man. 


CONSEQUENCES. 


97 

‘That, Sir,” said Tarrion, “is for you to judge.” Then 
he began, for he had a good memory, quoting a few' 
of the more important notes in the papers—slowdy and 
one by one as a man drops chlorodyne into a glass. 
When he had reached the peremptory order — and it 
was a peremptory order—the Strong Man w^as troubled. 

Tarrion woundup :—“And I fancy that special knowd 
edge of this kind is at least as valuable for, let us say, a 
berth in the Foreign Office, as the fact of being the nephew 
of a distinguished officers wife.” That hit the Strong Man 
hard, for the last appointment to the Foreign Office had 
been by black favor, and he knew it “ Fll see what I 
can do for you,” said the Strong Man, “ Many thanks,'' 
said Tarrion. Then he left and the Strong Man departed 
to see how the appointment was to be blocked. 


Followed a pause of eleven days ; with thunders and 
lightnings and much telegraphing. The appointment was 
not a very important one, carrying only between Rs. 500 
and Rs. 700 a month ; but, as the Viceroy said, it wms the 
principle of diplomatic secrecy that had to be maintained, 
and it was more than likely that a boy so well supplied 
wdth special ihtormation W'ould be w^orth translating. So 
they translated him. They must have suspected him, 
though he protested that his information was due to sin¬ 
gular talents of his own. Now', much of this story, includ¬ 
ing the after-history of the missing envelope, you must 
fill in for yourself, because there are reasons why it can¬ 
not be written. Tf you do not know^ about things Up Above, 
you won^t understand how to fill in, and you W'ill say it 
is impossible. 

What the Viceroy said wffien Tarrion was introduced to 
him w^as:—“So, this is the boy wffio ‘ rushed' the Govern- 



CONSEQUENCES. 


98 

ment of India, is it ? Recollect, Sir, that is not done twice 
So he must have known something. 

What Tarrion said when he saw his appointment gazet¬ 
ted was;—“ If Mrs. Hauksbee were twenty years younger, 
and I her husband, I should be Viceroy of India in fifteen 
years.' 

What Mrs. Hauksbee said, when Tarrion thanked her, 
almost with tears in his eyes, was first:—“ I told you so ! ” 
and next, to herself:—“ What fools men are 1 ” 


THE CONVERSION OF AURELIAN APGOGGIN. 


9f 


THf: CONVERSION OF AURELIAN McGOGGIN. 

Ride with an idle whip, ride with an unused heel. 

But, once in a way, there will come a day 

When the colt must be taught to feel 

The lash that falls, and the curb that galls, and the sting of the rowelled steel. 

Life's Handicap. 

This is not a tale exactly. It is a Tract ; and I am 
immensely proud of it Making a Tract is a Feat 
Every man is entitled to his own religious opinions ; 
but no man—least of all a junior—has a right to thrust 
these down other men’s throats. The Government sends 
out weird Civilians now and again ; But McGoggin was 
the queerest exported for a long time. He was clever 
—brilliantly clever—but his cleverness worked the wrong 
way. Instead of keeping to the study of the vernaculars, 
he had read some books written by a man called C'omte, 
I think, and a nian called Spencer, and a Professor Clif¬ 
ford. [You will find these books in the Library.] d'hey 
deal with people’s insides from the point of view of men 
who have no stomachs. There was no order against hi? 
reading them ; but his Mamma should have smacked 
him. 7 'hey fermented in his head, and he came out to 
India with a rarefied religion over and above his work. 
It was not much of a creed. It only proved that men 
had no souls, and there was no God and no hereafter, 
and that you must worry along somehow for the good of 
Humanity. 


I oo the conversion- of a UR el tan GOG gin 


One of its minor tenets seemed to be that the one thing 
more sinful than giving an order was obeying it. At least, 
that was what McGoggin said ; but 1 suspect he had 
misread his primers. 

I do not say a word against this creed. It was made 
up in Town where there is nothing but machinery and 
asphalte and building—all shut in by the fog. Natural¬ 
ly, a man grows to think that there is no one higher 
than himself, and that the Metropolitan Board of Works 
made everything. But in this country, where you really 
see humanity—raw, brown, naked humanity—with no¬ 
thing between it and the blazing sky, and only the 
used-up, over-handled earth underfoot, the notion some¬ 
how dies away, and most folk come back to simpler 
theories. Life, in India, is not long enough to waste in 
proving that there is no one in particular at the head oi 
affairs. For this reason. The Deputy is above the 
Assistant, the Commissioner above the Deputy, the 
Lieutenant-Governor above the Commissioner, and the 
Viceroy above all four, under the orders of the Secre¬ 
tary of State who is responsible to the Empress. If the 
Empress be not responsible to her Maker—if there is no 
Maker for her to be responsible to—the entire system 
of Our administration must be wrong. Which is mani¬ 
festly impossible. At Home men are to be excused, 
d'hey are stalled up a good deal and get intellectually 
“beany.” When you take a gross, “beany” horse to 
exercise, he slavers and slobbers over the bit till you 
can't see the horns. But the bit is there just the same. 
Men do not get “beany ” in India. The climate and the 
work are against playing bricks with words. 

If McGoggin had kept his creed, with the capital letters 
and the endings in “ isms,” to himself, no one would 
have cared ; but his grandfathers on both sides had been 


rilE CONVERSION OF AURELIAN M' GOGGIN. loi 

Wesleyan preachers, and the preaching strain came out 
in his mind. He wanted everyone at the Club to see 
that they had no souls too, and to help him to eliminate 
his Creator. As a good many men told him, he undoubt¬ 
edly had no soul, because he was so young, but it did 
not follow that his seniors were cvpially undeveloped ; 
and, whether there was another world or not, a man still 
wanted to read his i)apers in this. ‘‘ but that is not the 
})oint—that is not the point 1’' Aurelian used to say. Then 
men threw sofa-cushions at him and told him to go to 
any particular place he might believe in. They christened 
him the “ Blastoderm,'’—he said he came from a family 
of that name somewhere, in the pre-historic ages,—and, 
by insult and laughter strove to choke him dumb, for he 
was an unmitigated nuisance at the Club ; besides being 
an offence to the older men. His Deputy Commissioner, 
who was working on the Frontier when Aurelian was 
rolling on a bed-quilt, told him that, for a clever boy, 
Aurelian was a very big idiot. And, you know, if he had 
gone on with his work, he would have been caught up to 
the Secretariat in a few years. He was just the type that 
goes there—all head, no physique and a hundred theories. 
Not a soul was interested in IMcGoggin’s soul. He might 
have had two, or none, or somebody else s. His business 
was to obey orders and keep abreast of his tiles instead 
of devastating the Club with “ isms." 

He worked brilliantly ; but he could not accept any 
order without trying to better it. That was the fault of 
his creed. It made men too responsible and left too much 
to their honor. You can sometimes ride an old horse in 
a halter ; but never a colt. McGoggin took more trouble 
over his cases than any of the men of his year. He may 
have fancied that thirty-page judgments on fifty-rupee 
cases—both sides perjured to the gullet—advanced the 


102 THE CONVERSION OF Al/RELIAN J/’ GOGGIN. 

cause of Humanity. At any rate, he worked too much, 
and worried and fretted over the rebukes he received,and 
lectured away on his ridiculous creed out of office, till the 
Doctor had to warn him that he was overdoin*^ it. No 
man can toil eighteen annas in the rupee in June without 
suffering. But McGoggin was still intellectually beany ” 
and proud of himself and his powers, and he would take 
no hint. He worked nine hours a day steadily. 

“ Very well,’’ said the doctor, “ you’ll break down be¬ 
cause you are over-engined for your beam.” McGoggin 
was a little chap. 

One day, the collapse came—as dramatically as if it 
)iad been meant to embellish a Tract. 

It was just before the Rains. We were sitting in the 
verandah in the dead, hot, close air, gasping and pray¬ 
ing that the black-blue clouds would let down and bring 
{he cool. Very, very far away, there was a faint whisper, 
which was the roar of the Rains breaking over the river. 
One of the men heard it, got out of his chair, listened, 
and said, naturally enough :—“Thank God ! ” 

d'hen the Blastoderm turned in his place and said ;— 
“ Why I assure you it’s only the result of perfectly 
natural causes—atmospheric phenomena of the simplest 
kind. Why you should, therefore, return thanks to a 
Being who never did exist—who is only a figment—•” 

“ Blastoderm,” grunted the man in the next chair, “dry 
up, and throw me over the Pioneer. We know all about 
your ligments. ” The Blastoderm reached out to the table, 
took up one paper, and jum])ed as if something had stunjr 
him. Then he handed the paper over. 

“As I was saying,” he went on slowly and with an 
effort—“ due to perfectly natural causes—perfectly natural 
causes. T mean—” 

“Hi! Blastoderm, you’ve given me the Calcuita Mer* 
caniile A dverliser. ” 


THE CONVERSION OF A UR ELI AN M ’ GOGGIN. 103 

The dust got up in little whorls, while the tree-tops 
rocked eind the kites whistled. But no one was looking 
at the coming of the Rains. We were all staring at the 
Blastoderm who had risen from his chair and was fighting 
with his speech. Then he said, still more slowly :— 

“Perfectly conceivable-dictionary-red oak- 

ameneible-cause-retaining-shuttlecock- 

alone.” 

“Blastoderm’s drunk,” said one man. But the Blas¬ 
toderm was not drunk. He looked at us in a dazed sort 
of way, and began motioning with his hands in the half 
light as the clouds closed overhead. Then—with a 
scream :— 

‘ ‘ What is it ?-Can't-reserve—=—attainable-- 

market-obscure-” 

But his speech seemed to freeze in him, and—just as 
the lightning shot two tongues that cut the whole sky 
into three pieces and the rain fell in quivering sheets— 
the Blastoderm was struck dumb. He stood pawing and 
champing like a hard-held horse, and his eyes were full 
of terror. 

The Doctor came over in three minutes, and heard 
the story. “ Ifs aphasia'* said. “Take him to his 
room. I knew the smash would come. ” We carried 
the Blastoderm across in the pouring rain to his quar¬ 
ters, and the Doctor gave him bromide of potassium to 
make him sleep. 

Then the Doctor came back to us and told us that 
aphasia was like all the arrears of “Punjab Head” falling 
in a lump ; and that only once before—in the case of a 
yepoy—had he met with so complete a case. I myself 
have seen mild aphasia in an overworked man, but this 
sudden dumbness was uncanny—though, as the Blas¬ 
toderm himself might have said, due to “perfectly natural 


causes. 















I c)4 TRE CONVERSION OF A URELIAN M ’ GOGGIN. 

“ He'll have to take leave after this," said the Doctor ; 
“ He won't be fit for work for another three months. 
No ; it isn’t insanity or anything like it. It’s only com¬ 
plete loss of control over the speech and memory. I 
fancy it will keep the Blastoderm quiet, though. ’’ 

Two days later, the Blastoderm found his tongue again 
The first question he asked was :—“ What was it? ’’ The 
Doctor enlightened him. “But I can’t understand it !’’ 
said the Blastoderm ; “ I'm quite sane ; but I can’t be 
sure of my mind, it seems—my own memory—can I ? ’’ 

“Go up into the Hills for three months, and don’t think 
about it," said the Doctor. 

“ But I can’t understand it," repeated the Blastoderm ; 
“ It was my owfi’mmd. and memory." 

“ I can’t help it," said the Doctor ; there are a good 
many things you can’t understand ; and, by the time you 
h£ive put in my length of service, you’ll know exactly how 
much a man dare call his own in this world." 

The stroke cowed the Blastoderm. He could not un¬ 
derstand it He went into the Hills in fear and trembling, 
wondering whether he would be permitted to reach the 
end of any sentence he began. 

This gave him a wholesome feeling of mistrust. The 
legitimate explanation, that he had been overworking 
himself, failed to satisfy him. Something had wiped his 
lips of speech, as a mother wipes the milky lips of her 
child, and he was afraid—horribly afraid. 

So the Club had rest when he returned ; and if ever you 
come across Aurelian McGoggin laying down the law on 
things Human—he doesn’t seem to know as much as he 
used to about things Divine—put your forefinger on your 
lip for a moment, and see what happens. 

Don’t blame me if he throws a glass at your head / 


THE TAKING OF LUNGTUNGPEN. 


105 


THE TAKING OF LUNGTUNGPEN. 

So we loosed a bloomin’ volley, 

An’ we made the beggars cut, 

All* when our pouch was emptied out, 

We used the bloomin’ butt, 

Ho! My! 

Don’t yer come anigh, 

When Tommy is a playin’ with the baynit an’ the butt. 

Baj-rack Room Ballad, 

My friend Private Mulvaney told me this, sitting- on the 
parapet of the road to Dagshai, when we were hunting 
butterflies together. He had theories about the Army, and 
colored clay pipes perfectly. He said that the young 
soldier is the best to work with, “ on account av the sur- 
jiassing innocinse av the child.” 

“ Now, listen ! ” said Mulvaney, throwing himself full 
length on the wall in the sun. “ Pm a born scutt av the 
barrick-room ! The Army's mate an’ dhrink to me, bekaze 
Fm wan av the few that can't quit ut. Fve put in sivin- 
teen years, an’ the pipeclay’s in the marrow av me. Av I 
cud have kept out av wan big dhrink a month, I wud have 
been a Hon’ry Lift’nint by this time—a nuisince to my 
betthers, a laughiii’-shtock to my equils, an’ a curse to 
meself. Lein’ fvvhat I am. I’m Privit Mulvaney, wid no 
good-conduc’ pay an’ a devourin’ thirst. Always barrin’ 
me little frind Bobs Bahadur, I know as much about the 
Army as most men.” 

I said something here. 

“ Wolseley be shot! Betune you an’ me an’that but- 


Io6 the taking of LC/NG TUNG pen. 

terfiy net, he’s a ramblin’, .incoherint sort av a divil, wid 
wan oi on the Quane an’ the Coort, an’ the other on his 
blessed silf—ev’'erlastin’ly playing Saysar an’ Alexandricr 
rowled into a lump. Now Bobs is a sinsible little man. 
Wid Bobs an’ a few three-year-olds. I’d swape any army 
av" the earth into a jliairim, an’ throw it away afthervvards. 
Faith, I’m not jokin’! ’Tis the bhoys—the raw bhoys—■ 
that don’t know fwhat a bullut manes, an’ wudn’t care av 
they did—that dhii the work. They’re crammed wid bull- 
mate till they fairly ramps wid good livin’; and thin, av 
they don’t fight, they blow each other’s hids off. ’d’is the 
trut’ I’m tellin’ you. They shud be kept on dal-hhat an’ 
Idjriiw the hot weather; but there’d be a mut’ny av ’twas 
done. 

“Did ye iver hear how Privit Mulvaney tuk the town 
av Lungtungpen? I thought notl ’Twas the Lift’nint 
got the credit; but ’twas me planned the schame. A little 
before I was inviladed from Burma, me an’ four an’ twenty 
young wans undher a Lift’nint Brazenose, was ruinin’ our 
dijeshins thryin’ to catch dacoits. An’ such double-ended 
divils I niver knew ! ’Tis only a dah an’ a Snider that 
makes a dacoit. Widout thim, he’s a paceful cultivator^ 
an’ felony for to shoot. We hunted, an’ we hunted, an’ 
tuk fever an’ elephints now an’ again; but no dacoits. 
klvenshually, we puckarowed wan man. ‘Trate him tin- 
derly,’ sez the Lift’nint. So I tuk him away into the 
jungle, wid the Burmese Interprut’r an’ my clanin’-rod. 
Sez I to the man :—‘My paceful squireen,’ sez I, ‘you 
shquot on your hunkers an’ dimonstrate to 7}iv frind here, 
wherefrinds are whin they’re at home.?’ Wid that 
I introjuced him to the clanin’-rod, and he comminst to 
jabber ; the InterprutV interprutin’ in betweens, an’ me 
helpin’ the Intilligince Departmint wid my clanin’-rod 
whin the man misremimbered. 


THE 7'AKING OF LUNG TUNG PEN. 


107 


“Prisintly, I learnt that^ acrost the river, about nine 
miles away, was a town ]\isi dhrippm wid dahs, an’ bohs 
an’arrows, an’dacoits, an’elephints, 3.\\ jingles. ‘Good*’ 
sez I. ‘This office will now close !' 

“That night, I went to the Lift’nint an’ communicates 
my information. I never thought much of Lift’nint Braze- 
nose till that night. He was shtiff wid books an’ the- 
ouries, an’ all manner av thrimmin’s no manner av use. 
‘Town did ye say } ’ sez he. ‘Accordin’ to the \hQ-ouries 
av War, we shud wait for reinforcemints.’ ‘Faith!’ 
thinks I, ‘ we’d betther dig our graves thin’; for the near¬ 
est throops was up to their shtocks in the marshes out 
Mimbu way. ‘But,’ says the Lift’nint, ‘since ’tis a speshil 
case. I’ll make an excepshin. We’ll visit this Lungtung- 
pen to-night. ’ 

“The bhoys was fairly woild wid deloight whin I 
toLild ’em ; an’ by this an’ that, they wint through the 
jungle like buck-rabbits. About midnight we come to 
the shtrame which I had clane forgot to minshin to my 
orficer. I was on, ahead, wid four bhoys, an’ I thought 
that the Lift’nint might want to i\\Q-ourize. ‘Shtrip, 
blioys I ’ sez I. ‘ Shtrip to the buff, an’ shvvim in where 
glory waits ! ’ ‘ But I cant shvvim ! ’ sez two av thirn. 

‘ To think* I should live to hear that from a bhoy wid a 
board-school edukashin !’ sez I. ‘Take a lump av thiin- 
ber, an’ me an’Conolly here will ferry ye over, ye young 
ladies !" 

“We got an ould tree-trunk, an’ pushed off wid the 
kits an’ the rifles on it. The night was chokin’ dhark, an’ 
just as we was fairly embarked, I heard the Lift’nint 
behind av me CEillin’ out. ‘There’s a bit av a 7iullaJL 
here, Sorr,’sez I, ‘but I can feel the bottom already.' 
So I cud, for I was not a yard from the bank. 

“ ‘ Bit av a 7 inllah ! Bit av an eshtuary 1 ’ sez the LifG 


o8 


THE TAKING OF LUNGTUNGPEN 


nint. ‘ Go on, ye mad Iristiman ! Shtrip bhoys ! ^ 1 
heard him laugh ; an" the bhoys begun shtrippin’ an’ rol¬ 
lin’ a log into the wather to put their kits on. So me 
an’ Conolly shtruck out through the warm wather wid our 
log, an’ the rest come on behind. 

“ That shtrame was miles woide ! Orth’ris, on the 
rear-rank log, whispers we had got into the Thames be¬ 
low Sheerness by mistake. ‘ Rape on shwimmin ’ ye 
little blayguard,’sez I, ‘an’ don’t go pokin’ your dirty 
jokes at the Irriwaddy.’ ‘ Silince, men!’ sings out the 
Lift’nint. So we shwum on into the black dhark, wid 
our chests on the logs, trustin’ m the Saints an’ the luck 
av the British Army. 

“ Evenshually, we hit ground—a bit av sand—an’a 
man. I put my heel on the back av him. He skreeched 
an’ ran. 

‘ ‘ ‘ Now we’ve done it! ’ sez Lift’nint Brazenose. ‘ Where 
the Divil zs Lungtungpen ? ’ There was about a minute 
and a half to wait. The bhoys laid a hould av their rifles 
an’ some thried to put their belts on ; we was marchin’ 
wid fixed baynits av coorse. Thin we knew where 
Lungtungpen was ; for we had hit the river-wall av it in 
tlie dhark, an’ the whole town blazed wid thim messin’ 
jingles an’ Sniders like a cat’s back on a frosty night. 
They was firin’ all ways at wanst ; but over our bids into 
the shtrame. 

‘ ‘ ‘ Have you got your rifles.? ’ sez Brazenose. ‘ Got ’em ! ’ 
sez Orth’ris, ‘I’ve got that thief Mulvaney’s for all my 
back-pay, an’ she’ll kick my heart sick wid that blun¬ 
derin’ long shtock av hers.’ ‘Go on ! ’ yells Brazenose, 
whippin’ his sword out. ‘ Go on an’ take the town ? An’ 
the Lord have mercy on our sowls ! 

“ Thin the bhoys gave wan divastatin’ howl, an’ pranced 
into the dhark, feelin’ for the town, an’ blindin’ an’ stiffin’ 


THE TAKING OF LUNGTUNGPEN, 


109 

like Cavalry Ridin’ Masters-whin the grass pricked their 
bare legs. I hammered wid the butt at some bamboo 
thing that felt wake, an’ the rest come an’ hammered 
contagious, while the jingles was jingling, an’ feroshus 
yells from inside was shplittin’ our ears. We was too 
close under the wall for thim to hurt us. 

“ Evenshually, the thing, whatever ut was, bruk ; an’ 
the six and twinty av us tumbled, wan afther the other, 
naked as we was borrun, into the town of Luntungpen. 
There was a melly av a sumpshus kind for a whoile; but 
whether they tuk us, all white an’ wet, for a new breed 
av divil, or a new kind av dacoit, I don’t know. They 
ran as though we was both, an’ we wint into thim, 
baynit an’ butt, shriekin' wid laughin’. There was 
torches in the shtreets, an’ I saw little Orth’ris rubbin' 
his showlther ivry time he loosed my long-shtock Mar¬ 
tini ; an’ Brazenose walkin’ into the gang wid his sword, 
like Diarmid av the Golden Collar—barring he hadn’t a 
stitch, av clothin’ on him. We diskivered elephints wid 
deceits under their bellies, an’, what wid wan thing an’ 
another, we was busy till mornin’ takin’ possession av 
the town of Lungtungpen. 

“Thin we halted an’ formed up, the wimmen howlin’ 
in the houses an’ Lift’nint Brazenose blushin’ pink in the 
light av the mornin’ sun. ’Twas the most ondasint p’rade 
I iver tuk a hand in. Foive and twenty privits an’ a 
orficer av the line in review ordher, an’ not as much as 
wild dust a fife befiine ’em all in the way of clothin’ ! Eight 
av us had then belts an’ pouches on ; but the rest had 
gone in wid a iiandful av cartridges an’ the skin God gave 
him. They was as nakid as Vanus. 

“ ‘ Number off from the right! ’ sez the Lift’nint. ‘ Odd 
numbers fall out to dress ; even numbers pathrol the 
town till relieved by the dressing party.’ Let me tell 


10 


THE TAKING OF LUNGTUNGPEN, 


you, piithrollin’ a town wid nothing on is an ex/>^y/rience. 
I pathrolled for tin minutes, an' begad, before 'twas over, 
I blushed. The women laughed so. I niver blushed 
before or since ; but I blushed all over my carkiss thin. 
Orth'ris didn’t pathrol. He sez only :—“ Portsmith Bar- 
ricks an’ the ’Ard av a Sunday ! ‘ Thin he lay down an’ 
rowled anyways wid laughin’. 

“When we was all dhressed, we counted the dead— 
sivinty-foive dacoits besides wounded. We tuk five ele- 
phints, a hunder’ an’ sivinty Sniders, two hunder’ dabs, 
and a lot av other burglarious thruck. Not a man av us 
was hurt—excep’ may be the Lift’nint, an’ he from the 
shock to his dasincy. 

“The Headman av Luntungpen, who surrinder’d him¬ 
self, asked the Interprut’r:—‘ Av the English fight like 
that wid their clo’es off, what in the wurruld do they do 
wid their clo’es on ? ’ Orth’ris began rowlin’ his eyes an’ 
crackin’ his fingers an’ dancin’ a step-dance for to impress 
the Headman. He ran to his house ; an’ we spint the 
rest av the day carryin’ the Lift’nint on our showlthers 
round the town, an’ playin’ wid the Burmese babies—fat, 
little, brown little divils, as pretty as pictures. 

“Whin I was inviladed for the dysent’ry to India, I sez 
to the Lift’nint:—‘ Sorr,' sez I, ‘ you’ve the makin’s in you 
av a great man ; but, av you’ll let an ould sodger spake, 
you’re too fond of the-oamm’. He shuk hands wid me 
and sez:—‘Hit high, hit low, there’s no plasin you, 
Mulvaney. You’ve seen me waltzin’ through Lungtung- 
pen like a Red Injin widout the war-paint, an’ you say 
I’m too fond av ihe-ouHsm P’ ‘Sorr,’ sez I, for I loved 
the bhoy ; ‘ I wud waltz wid you in that condishin 
through Hell, an’ so wud the rest av the men ! ’ Thin 
I wint downshtrame in the flat an’ left him my blessin.' 


THE TAICIHG OF LUNGTUNGPEH. 


Ill 


May the Saints carry ut where ut shud go, for he was a 
fine upstandin’ young orficer. 

“ To reshume ! Fwhat I’ve said jist shows the use av 
three-year-olds. Wud fifty seasoned sodgers have taken 
Lungtungpen in the dhark that way ? No! They’d 
know the risk av fever an chill. Let alone the shootin’. 
Two hundher’ might have done ut. But the three-year- 
olds know little an' care less ; an’ where there’s no fear, 
there’s no danger. Catch thim young, feed thim high, 
an’ by the honor av that great, little man Bobs, behind 
a good orficer ’tisn’t only dacoits they’d smash wid their 
clo’es off—’tis Con-ti-nental Ar-r-r-mies ! They tuk Lung¬ 
tungpen nakid ; an’ they’d take St. Pethersburg in their 
dhrawers ! Begad, they would that! 

“Here’s your pipe, Sorr! Shmoke her tinderly wid 
honey-dew, afther letting the reek av the Canteen plug 
die away. But ’tis no good, thanks to you all the same, 
fillin’ my pouch wid your chopped bhoosa. Canteen 
baccy's like the Army. It shpoils a man’s taste for 
moilder things.” 

So saying, Mulvaney took up his butterfly-net, and 
returned to barracks. 


112 


A GERM DESTROYER, 


A GERM DESTROYER. 

Pleasant it is for the Little Tin Gods 
When great Jove nods ; 

But Little Tin Gods make their little mistakes 

In missing the hour when great Jove wakes. 

As a general rule, it is inexpedient to meddle with 
questions of State in a land where men are highly paid 
to work them out for you. This tale is a justifiable 
exception. 

Once in every five years, as you know, we indent for 
a new Viceroy ; and each Viceroy imports, with the 
rest of his baggage, a Private Secretary, who may or 
may not be the real Viceroy, just as Fate ordains. Fate 
looks after the Indian Empire because it is so big and 
so helpless. 

There was a Viceroy once, who brought out with him 
a turbulent Private Secretary—a hard man with a soft 
manner and a morbid passion for work. This Secretary 
was called Wonder—^John Fennil Wonder. The’Viceroy 
possessed no name—nothing but a string of counties 
and two-thirds of the alphabet after them. He said, in 
confidence, that he was the electro-plated figure-head of 
a golden administration, and he watched in a dreamy, 
amused way Wonder's attempts to draw matters which 
were entirely outside his province into his own hands. 
“ When we are all cherubims together,” said His Excel¬ 
lency once, “my dear, good friend Wonder will head the 


A GERM DESTROYER. 


JI 3 

conspiracy for plucking out Gabriel’s tail-feathers or steal¬ 
ing Peter’s keys. Then I shall report him.” 

But, though the Viceroy did nothing to check Won¬ 
der’s officiousness, other people said unpleasant things. 
May be the Members of Council began it; but, finally, all 
Simla agreed that there was “too much Wonder, and 
too little Viceroy ” in regime. Wonder was always 
quoting “His Excellency.” It was “^His Excellency 
this,” “ His Excellency that,” “In the opinion of his Ex¬ 
cellency,” and so on. The Viceroy smiled ; but he did 
not heed. He said that, so long as his old men squabbled 
with his “dear, good Wonder,” they might be induced to 
leave the “ Immemorial East ” in peace. 

“Nowise man has a policy,” said the Viceroy. “A 
Policy is the blackmail levied on the Fool by the Un¬ 
foreseen. I am not the former, and I do not believe in 
the latter.” 

I do not quite see what this means, unless it refers to 
an Insurance Policy. Perhaps it was the Viceroy’s way 
of saying :—“ Lie low.” 

That season, came up to Simla one of these crazy people 
with only a single idea. These are the men who make 
things move ; but they are not nice to talk to. This 
man’s name was Mellish, and he had lived for fifteen 
years on land of his own, in Lower Bengal, studying 
cholera. He held that cholera was a germ that propa¬ 
gated itself as it flew through a muggy atmosphere ; and 
stuck in the branches of trees like a woolflake. The 
germ could be rendered sterile, he said, by “ Mellish’s 
Own Invincible Fumigatory ”— a heavy violet-black pow¬ 
der— “ the result of fifteen years’ scientific investigation, 
Sir ! ” 

Inventors seem very much alike as a caste. They 
talk loudly, especially about “conspiracies of monopo- 

3 


A GERM DESTROYER. 


114 

lists;” they beat upon the table with their fists; and 
they secrete fragments of their inventions about their per¬ 
sons. 

Mellish said that there was a IMedical “Ring” at 
Simla, headed by the Surgeon-General, who was in 
league, apparently, with all the Hospital Assistants in 
the Empire. I forget exactly how he proved it, but it 
had something to do with “skulking up to the Hills” ; 
and what Mellish wanted was the independent evidence 
of the Viceroy—“Steward of our Most Gracious Majesty 
the Queen, Sir.” So Mellish went up to Simla, with 
eighty-four pounds of Fumigatory in his trunk, to speak 
to the Viceroy and to show him the merits of the inven¬ 
tion. 

But it is easier to see a Viceroy than to talk to him, 
unless you chance to be as important as Mellishe of 
Madras. He was a six-thousand-rupee man, so great 
that his daughters never “married.” They “contracted 
alliances.” He himself was not paid. He “received 
emoluments,” and his journeys about the country were 
“tours of observation.” His business was to stir up the 
people in Madras with a long pole—as you stir up tench 
in a pond—and the people had to come up out of their 
comfortable old ways and gasp:—“This is Enlighten¬ 
ment and Progress. Isn’t it fine! ” Then they gave 
Mellishe statutes and jasmine garlands, in the hope of 
getting rid of him. 

Mellishe came up to Simla “to confer with the Vice¬ 
roy.” That was one of his perquisites. The Viceroy 
knew nothing of Mellishe except that he was “one of 
those middle-class deities who seem necessary to the 
spiritual comfort of this Paradise of the Middle-classes,” 
and that, in all probability, he had “suggested, designed, 
founded, and endowed all the public institutions in 


A GERxM DESTROYER, 


115 

Madras.” Which proves that His Excellency, though 
dreamy, had experience of the ways of six-thousand- 
rupee men. 

Mellishe’s name was E. Mellishe, and Mellish’s was 
E. S. Hellish, and they were both staying at the same 
hotel, and the Fate that looks after the Indian Empire 
ordained that Wonder should blunder and drop the final 
that the Chaprassi should help him, and that the 
note which ran : Dear Mr. Mellish.—Can you set aside 
your other engagements ^and lunch with us at two to-morrow ? 
His Excellency has an hour atyour disposalthen^'' should be 
given to Mellish with the Fumigatory. He nearly wept 
with pride and delight, and at the appointed hour can¬ 
tered to Peterhoff, a big paper-bag full of the Fumigatory 
in his coat-tail pockets. He had his chance, and he 
meant to make the most of it. Mellishe of Madras had 
been so portentously solemn about his ^‘conference,” 
that Wonder had arranged for a private tiffin,—no A.-D. • 
C.’s, no Wonder, no one but the Viceroy who said plaint¬ 
ively that he feared being left alone with unmuzzled 
autocrats like the great Mellishe of Madras. 

But his guest did not bore the Viceroy. On the con¬ 
trary, he amused him. Mellish was nervously anxious 
to go straight to his Fumigatory, and talked at random 
until tiffin was over and His Excellency asked him to 
smoke. The Viceroy was pleased with Mellish because 
he did not “ talk shop.” 

As soon as the cheroots were lit, Mellish spoke like a 
man ; beginning with his cholera-theory, reviewing his 
fifteen years’ “scientific labors,” the machinations of the 
“Simla Ring,” and the excellence of his Fumigatory, 
while the Viceroy watched him between half-shut eyes 
and thought: “Evidently, this is the wrong tiger ; but 
it is an original animal.” Mellish’s hair was standing on 


ii6 


A GERM DESTROYER. 


end with excitement, and he stammered. Ue began 
groping in his coat-tails and, before the Viceroy knew 
what was about to happen, he had tipped a bagful of his 
powder into the big silver ash-tray. 

“ J-j-judge for yourself, Sir,” said Melhsh. “V’ Ex¬ 
cellency shall judge for yourself ! Absolutely infallible, 
on my honor.” 

He plunged the lighted end of his cigar into the powder, 
which began to smoke like a volcano, and send up fat, 
greasy wreaths of copper-colored smoke. In five seconds 
the room was filled with a most pungent and sickening 
stench—a reek that took fierce hold of the trap of your 
windpipe and shut it. The powder then hissed and fizzed, 
and sent out blue and green sparks, and the smoke rose 
ttll you could neither see, nor breathe, nor gasp. Hel¬ 
lish, however, was used to it. 

“ Nitrate of strontia,” he shouted ; “ baryta, bone-mea^ 
etcetera! Thousand cubic feet smoke per cubic inch. 
Not a germ could live—not a germ, Y' Excellency ! ” 

But His Excellency had fled, and was coughing at 
the foot of the stairs, while all Peterhoff hummed like 
a hive. Red Lancers came in, and the Head Chaprassi 
who speaks English, came in, and mace-bearers came 
in, and ladies ran down-stairs screaming, “fire ” ; for the 
smoke was drifting through the house and oozing out of 
the windows, and bellying along the verandahs, and 
wreathing and writhing across the gardens. No one 
could enter the room where Hellish was lecturing on 
his Fumigatory, till that unspeakable powder had burned 
itself out. 

Then an Aide-de-Camp, who desired the V. C., rushed 
through the rolling clouds and hauled Hellish into the 
hall. The Viceroy was prostrate with laughter, and 


A GERM DESTROYER, 


II7 

could only waggle his hands feebly at Mellish, who was 
shaking a fresh bagful of powder at him. 

“ Glorious ! Glorious ! ” sobbed His Excellency. Not 
a germ, as you justly observe, could exist! I can swear 
it. A magnificent success ! 

Then he laughed till the tears came, and Wonder, 
who had caught the real Meilishe snorting on the Mall, 
entered and was deeply shocked at the scene. But the 
Viceroy was delighted, because he saw that Wonder 
would presently depart. Mellish with the Fumigatory 
was also pleased, for he felt that he had smashed the 
Simla Medical “ Ring.” 

Few men could tell a story like His Excellency when 
he took the trouble, and the account of “my dear, good 
Wonder’s friend with the powder” went the round of 
Simla, and flippant folk made Wonder unhappy by their 
remarks. 

But His Excellency told the tale once too often—for 
Wonder. As he meant to do. It was at a Seepee 
Picnic. Wonder was sitting just behind the Viceroy. 

“And I really thought for a moment,” wound up His 
Excellency, “that my dear good Wonder had hired an 
assassin to clear his way to the throne ! ” 

Every one laughed ; but there was a delicate subtinkle 
in the Viceroy’s tone which Wonder understood. He 
found that his health was giving away ; and the Viceroy 
allowed him to go, and presented him with a flaming 
“ character ” for use at Home among big people. 

“My fault entirely, ” said His Excellency, in after 
seasons, with a twinkling in his eye. “ My inconsist¬ 
ency must always have been distasteful to such a master¬ 
ly man.” 


KIDNAPPED* 


118 


KIDNAPPED. 

There is a tide in the affairs of men, 

Which, taken any way you please, is bad. 

And strands them in forsaken guts and creeks 
No (decent soul would think of visiting. 

You cannot stop the tide ; but now and then. 

You may arrest some rash adventurer 

Who—h’m—will hardly thank you for your pains. 

Vibart's Moralities, 

We are a high-caste and enlightened race, and infant- 
marriage is very shocking and the consequences are 
sometimes peculiar ; but, nevertheless, the Hindu notion 
—which is the Continental notion, which is the aboriginal 
notion—of arranging marriages irrespective of the personal 
inclinations of the married, is sound. Think for a minute, 
and you will see that it must be so; unless, of course, 
you believe in “affinities.” In which case you had 
better not read this tale. How can a man who has never 
married ; who cannot be trusted to pick up at sight a 
moderately sound horse ; whose head is hot and upset 
with visions of domestic felicity, go about the choosing 
of a wife } He cannot see straight or think straight if he 
tries; and the same disadvantages exist in the case of a 
girls fancies. But when mature, married and discreet 
people arrange a match between a boy and a girl, they do 
it sensibly, with a view to the future, and the young 
couple live happily ever afterwards. As everybody knows. 

Properly speaking, Government should establish a 
Matrimonial Department, efficiently officered, with a 


KIDNAPPED. 


II9 

Jury of Matrons, a Judge of the Chief Court, a Senior 
Chaplain, and an Awful Warning, in the shape of a love- 
match that has gone wrong, chained to the trees in the 
court-yard. All marrieiges should be made through the 
Department, which might be subordinate to the Educa¬ 
tional Department, under the same penalty as that iittach- 
ing to the transter of land without a stamped document. 
But Government won’t take suggestions. It pretends 
that it is too busy. However, I will put my notion 
on record, and explain the example that illustrates the 
theory. 

Once upon a time there was a good young man—a 
lirst-class olhcer in his own Department—a man with a 
career before him and, possibly, a K. C. I. E. at the end 
of it. All his superiors spoke well of him, because he 
knew how to hold his tongue and his pen at the proper 
times. There are to-day only eleven men in India who 
possess this secret; and they have all, with one exception, 
attained great honor and enormous incomes. 

This good young man was quiet and self-eontained— 
too old for his years by far. Which always carries its 
own punishment. Had a Subaltern, or a Tea-Planter’s 
Assistant, or anybody who enjoys life and has no care 
for to-morrow, done what he tried to do not a soid would 
have ('ared. But when Peythroppe—the estimable, 
virtuous, economical, quiet, hard-working, young Pey¬ 
throppe—fell, there was a flutter through live Depart¬ 
ments. 

The manner of his fall was in this way. He met a 
Miss Castries—d’Castries it was originally, but the family 
dropped the d’ for administrative reasons—and he fell in 
love with her even more energetically than he worked. 
Understand clearly that there was not a breath of a word 
to be said against Miss Castries—not a shadow of a 


I 20 


KIDNAPPED. 


])reath. She was good and very lovely—possessed what 
innocent people at home call a “ Spanish ” complexion, 
with thick blue-black hair growing low down on the 
forehead, into a “ widow’s peak,” and big violet eyes 
under eyebrows as black and as straight as the borders 
of a Gazette Extraordinary^ when a big man dies. But 

-but-but-.Well, she was a sweet girl and 

very pious, but for many reasons she was “ impossible.” 
Quite so. All good Mammas know what “impossible” 
means. It was obviously absurd that Peythroppe should 
marry her. 1 he little opal-tinted onyx at the base of her 
hnger-nails said this as plainly as print. Further, mar¬ 
riage with Miss Castries meant marriage with several 
other Castries—Honorary Lieutenant Castries her Papa, 
Mrs. Eulalie Castries her Mamma, and all the rami- 
hcations of the Castries family, on incomes ranging from 
Rs. 175 to Rs. 470 a month, and their wives and con¬ 
nections again. 

It would have been cheaper for Peythroppe to have 
assaulted a Commissioner with a dog-whip, or to have 
burned the records of a Deputy Commissioner’s Office, 
than to have contracted an alliance with the Castries. 
It would have weighted his after-career less—even under 
a Government which never forgets and never forgives. 
Everybody saw this but Peythroppe. He was going to 
marry Miss Castries, he was—being of age and drawing 
a good income—and woe betide the house that would 
not afterwards receive Mrs. Virginie Saulez Peythroppe 
with the deference due to her husband’s rank. I’hat was 
Peythroppe’s ultimatum, and any remonstrance drove 
him frantic. 

These sudden madnesses most afflict the sanest men. 
There was a case once—but I will tell you of that later 
on. You cannot account for the nuiniei, except under a 





A'/ViVArFED. 


121 


theory directly contradicting the one about the Place 
wherein marriages are made. Peythroppe was burningly 
anxious to put a millstone round his neck at the outset 
of his career; and argument had not the hast effect on 
him. He was going to marry Miss Castries, and the 
business was his own business. He would thank you 
to keep your advice to yourself. With a man in this con¬ 
dition, mere words only fix him in his purpose. Of course 
he cannot see that marriage out here does not concern 
the individual but the Government he serves. 

Do you remember Mrs. Hauksbee—the most wonder¬ 
ful woman in India } She saved Pluffies from Mrs. Rei¬ 
ver, won Tarrion his appointment in the Foreign Office, 
and was defeated in open field by Mrs. Cusack-Brem- 
mil. She heard of the lamentable condition of Pey¬ 
throppe, and her brain struck out the plan that saved 
him. She had the wisdom of the Serpent, the logical 
coherence of the Man, the fearlessness of the Child, and 
the triple intuition of the Woman. Never—no, never— 
as long as a tonga buckets down the Solon dip, or the 
couples go a-riding at the back of Summer Hill, will there 
be such a genius as Mrs. Hauksbee. She attended the 
consultation of Three Men on Peythroppe’s case ; and she 
stood up with the lash of her riding whip between her lips 
and spake. 

Three weeks later, Peythroppe dined with the Three 
Men, and the Gazette of Indta came in. Peythroppe found 
to his surprise that he had been gazetted a month’s leave. 
Don’t ask me how this was managed. I believe firmly 
that, if Mrs. Hauksbee gave the order, the whole Great 
Indian Administration would stand on its head. The 
Three Men had also a month’s leave each. Peythroppe 
put the Gazette down and said bad words. ^ Then there 


122 


A’IDNAFPED. 


came from the compound the soft “pad-pad’^ of camels 
— “thieves’ camels,” the Bikaneer breed that don’t bubble 
and howl when they sit down and get up. 

After that, I don’t know what happened. This much is 
certain. Peythroppe disappeared—vanished like smoke 
—and the long foot-rest chair in the house of the Three 
Men was broken to splinters. Also a bedstead departed 
from one of the bedrooms. 

Mrs. Hauksbee said that Mr. Peythroppe was shooting 
in Rajputana with the Three Men ; so we were compelled 
to believe her. 

At the end of the month, Peythroppe was gazetted 
twenty days* extension of leave; but there was wrath and 
lamentation in the house of Castries. The marriage-day 
had been fixed, but the bridegroom never came: and the 
D’Silvas, Pereiras, and Ducketts lifted their voices and 
mocked Plonorary Lieutenant Castries as one who had 
been basely imposed upon. Mrs. Hauksbee went to the 
wedding, and was much astonished when Peythroppe 
did not appear. After seven weeks, Peythroppe and the 
Three Men returned from Rajputana. Peythroppe was in 
hard tough condition, rather white, and more self-con¬ 
tained than ever. 

One of the Three Men had a cut on his nose, caused 
by the kick of a gun. Twelve-bores kick rather cu¬ 
riously. 

Then came Honorary Lieutenant Castries, seeking for 
the blood of his perfidious son-in-law to be. He said 
things—vulgar and “impossible” things, whicli showed 
the raw rough “ ranker ” below the “Honorary,” and I 
fancy Peythroppe’s eyes were opened. Anyhow, he held 
his peace till the end ; w’hen he spoke briefly. Honorary 
Lieutenant Castries asked for a “peg” before he went 
away to die or bring a suit for breach of promise. 


KIDNAPPED. 


123 


Miss Castries was a very good girl. She said that she 
would have no breach of promise suits. She said that, if 
she was not a lady, she was refined enough to know that 
ladies kept their broken hearts to themselves ; and, as 
she ruled her parents, nothing happened. Later on, she 
married a most respectable and gentlemanly person. lie 
travelled for an enterprising firm in Calcutta, and was all 
that a good husband should be. 

So Peythroppe came to his right mind again, and did 
much good work, and was honored by cdl who knew him. 
One of these days he will marry; but he will marry a 
sweet pink-and-white maiden, on the Government House 
List, with a little money and some influential connections, 
as every wise man should. And he will never, all his life, 
tell her what happened during the seven weeks of his 
shooting-tour in Rajputana. 

But just think how much trouble and expense—for 
camel-hire is not cheap, and those Bikaneer brutes had to 
be fed like humans—might have been saved by a properly 
conducted Matrimonial Department, under the control of 
the Director-General of Education, but corresponding 
direct with the Viceroy. 


1 24 THE ARREST OE T/EE'TEA'AXT GOLlGirTL 


THE ARRESr OF LIEUTENANT OOLIOHTLY. 

‘“T’ve forgotten the countersign,’ sez ’e. 

‘Oh ! You ’ave, ’aye you ? ’ sez I. 

‘ Hut I’m the Colonel,’ sez ’e. 

‘Oh ! You are', are you ?’ sez I. ‘Colonel nor no Colonei, you waits 
’ere ti’l I’m relieved, an’ the Sarjint reports on your ugly old mug. 
Coop'A sez I. 

An’ s’elp me soul,’iwas the Colonel after all 1 Hut I was a recruity then. ’ 
The Unedited Autobiography of Private Ortheris. 

If there was one thing on which Golightly prided him¬ 
self more than another, it was looking like “an Officer 
and a Gentleman.” He said it was for the honor of the 
Service that he attired himself so elaborately; but those 
who knew him best said that it was just personal vanity. 
There was no harm about Golightly—not an ounce. He 
recognized a horse when he saw one, and could do more 
than fill a cant’e. He played a very fair game at billiards, 
and was a sound man at the whist-table. Everyone liked 
him; and nobody ever dreamed of seeing him handcuffed 
on a station platform as a deserter. But this sad thing 
happened. 

He was going down from Dalhousie, at the end of his 
leave—riding down. He had cut his leave as fine as he 
dared, and wanted to come down in a hurry. 

It was fairly warm at Dalhousie, and, knowing what 
to expect below, he descended in a new khaki suit— 
tight fitting—of a delicate olive-green; a peacock-blue 
tie, white collar, and a snowy white solah helmet. He 
prided himself on looking neat even when he was riding 



THE ATTEST OF LIEUTENANT GOLTGHTL K 125 

* post. He did look neat, and he was so deeply concerned 
about his appearance before he started that he quite for¬ 
got to take anything but some small change with him. 
He left all his notes at the hotel. His servants had gone 
down the road before him, to be ready in waiting at Pa- 
thankote with a change of gear. That was what he called 
travelling in “light marching-order.” He was proud of 
his faculty of organization—what we call btmdobusl. 

Twenty-two miles out of Dalhousie it began to rain— 
not a mere hill-shower but a good, tepid monsoonish 
downpour. Golightly bustled on, wishing that he had 
brought an umbrella. The dust on the roads turned into 
mud, and the pony mired a good deal. So did Golightly’s 
gaiters. But he kept on steadily and tried to think 
how pleasant the coolth was. 

His next pony was rather a brute at starting, and Go¬ 
lightly’s hands being slippery with the rain, contrived to 
get rid of Golightly at a corner. He chased the animal, 
caught it, and went ahead briskly. The spill had not im¬ 
proved his clothes or his temper, and he had lost one 
spur. He kept the other one employed. By the time 
that stage was ended, the pony had had as much ex¬ 
ercise as he wanted and, in spite of the rain, Golightly 
was sweating freely. At the end of another miserable 
half-hour, Golightly found the world disappear before his 
eyes in clammy pulp. The rain had turned the pith of 
his huge and snowy solah-topee into an evil-smelling 
dough, and it had closed on his head like a half-opened 
mushroom. Also the green lining was beginning to 
run. 

Golightly did not say anything worth recording here. 
He tore off and squeezed up as much of the brim as was 
in his eyes and ploughed on. The back of the helmet 
was flapping on his neck and the sides stuck to his ears. 


126 the arrest of lieutenant goltghtl k 

but the leather band and green lining kept things roughly 
together, so that the hat did not actually melt away 
where it flapped. 

Presently, the pulp and the green stuff made a sort of 
slimy mildew which ran over Golightly in several direc¬ 
tions—down his back and bosom for choice. The khaki 
color ran too—it was really shockingly bad dye—and 
sections of Golightly were brown, and patches were violet, 
and contours were ochre, and streaks were ruddy red, and 
blotches werO nearly white, according to the nature and 
peculiarities of the dye. When he took out his hand¬ 
kerchief to wipe his face and the green of the hat-lining 
and the purple stuff that had soaked through on to his 
neck from the tie became thoroughly mixed, the effect 
was amazing. 

Near Dhar the rain stopped and the evening sun 
came out and dried him up slightly. It fixed the 
colors, too. Three miles from Pathankote the last 
pony fell dead lame, and Golightly was forced to walk. 
He pushed on into Pathankote to find his servants. He 
did not know then that his khitmatgar had stopped 
by the roadside to get drunk, and would come on the 
next day saying that he had sprained his ankle. When 
he got into Pathankote, he couldn't find his servants, 
his boots were stiff and ropy with mud, and there were 
large quantities of dirt about his body. The blue tie 
had run as much as the khaki So he took if off with 
the collar and threw it away. Then he said something 
about servants generally and tried to get a peg. Pie 
•paid eight annas for the drink, and this revealed to him 
that he had only six annas more in his pocket—or in 
the world as he stood at that hour. 

He went to the Station-Master to negotiate for a 
first-class ticket to Khasa, where he was stationed. The 


THE ARREST OF LIEUTENANT GOLIGHTL V. 1 27 

booking-clerk said something to the Station-Master, the 
Station-Master said something to the Telegraph Clerk, 
and the three looked at him with curiosity. They asked 
him to wait for heilf-aii-hour, while they telegraphed to 
Umritsar for authority. So he waited and four con¬ 
stables came and grouped themselves picturesquely round 
him. Just as he was preparing to ask them to go away, 
the Station-Master said that he would give the Sahib 
a ticket to Umritsar, if the Sahib would kindly come 
inside the booking-office. Golightly stepped inside, and 
the next thing he knew was that a ponstable was attached 
to each of his legs and arms, while the Station-Master 
was trying to cram a mail-bag over his head. 

There was a very fair scuffle all round the booking- 
office, and Golightly received a nasty cut over his eye 
through falling against a table. But the constables 
were too much for him, and they and the Station-Master 
handcuffed him securely. As soon as the mail-bag was 
slipped, he began expressing his opinions, and the head- 
constable said:—“Without doubt this is the soldier- 
Englishman we required. Listen to the abuse! ” Then 
Golightly asked the Station-Master what the this and 
the that the proceedings meant. The Station-Master 
told him he \Yas “Private John Binkle of the-Regi¬ 

ment, 5 ft. 9 in., fair hair, gray eyes, and a dissipated 
appearance, no marks on the body,’" who had deserted 
a fortnight ago. Golightly began explaining at great 
length : and the more he explained the less the Station- 
Master believed him. He said that no Lieutenant 
could look such a ruffian as did Golightly, and that his 
instructions were to send his capture under proper escort 
to Umritsar. Golightly was feeling very damp and un¬ 
comfortable, and the language he used was not fit for 
publication, even in an expurgated form. The four 


128 THE ARREST OF LTEUTENANT GOLIGHTL Y. 


constables saw him safe to Umritsar in an “ inter¬ 
mediate compartment, and he spent the four-hour 
journey in abusing them as fluently as his knowledge of 
the vernaculars allowed. 

At Umritsar he was bundled out on the platform into 
the arms of a Corporal and two men of the-Regi¬ 

ment. Golightly drew himself up and tried to carry off 
matters jauntily. He did not feel too jaunty in hand¬ 
cuffs, with four constables behind him, and the blood 
from the cut) on his forehead stiffening on his left cheek, 
d’he Corporal was not jocular either. Golightly got as 
far as :—“ This is a very absurd mistake, my men,” when 
the Corporal told him to “ stow his lip ” and come along. 
Golightly did not want to come along. He desired to 
stop and explain. He explained very well indeed, un¬ 
til the Corporal cut in with :—"■You aorficer! Ifls the 
like o’ you as brings disgrace on the likes of us. 
Bloomin’ fine orficer you are ! I know your regiment. 
The Rogue’s March is the quickstep where you come 
from. You’re a black shame to the Service.” 

Golightly kept his temper, and began explaining all 
over again from the beginning. Then he was marched 
out of the rain into the refreshment-room and told not 
to make a qualified'fool of himself. The men were go¬ 
ing to run him up to Fort Govindghar. And ‘‘running 
up ” is a performance almost as undignified as the Frog 
March. 

Golightly was nearly hysterical with rage and the chill 
and the mistake and the handcuffs and the headache that 
the cut on his forehead had given him. He really laid 
himself out to express what was in his mind. When he 
had quite finished and his throat was feeling dry, one of 
the men said: — “Fve ’eard a few beggars in the click 
blind, stiff and crack on a bit; but I’ve never ’eard any- 



THE ARREST OF LIEUTENANT GOLIGHTLY. 

one to touch this ere ‘orficer.They were not angry, 
with him. They rather admired him. They had some 
beer at the refreshment-room, and offered Golightly some 
too, because he had “swore won’erful.” They asked 
him to tell them all about the adventures of Private John 
Binkle while he was loose on the country-side ; and that 
made Golightly wilder than ever. If he had kept his wits 
about him he would have kept quiet until an officer came ; 
but he attempted to run. 

Now the butt of a Martini in the small of your back 
hurts a great deal, and rotten, rain-soaked khaki tears 
easily when two men are yerking at your collar. 

Golightly rose from the floor feeling very sick and 
giddy, with his shirt ripped open all down his breast 
and nearly all down his back. He yielded to his luck, 
and at that point the down-train from Lahore came in, 
carrying one of Golightly’s Majors. 

This is the Major’s evidence in full:— 

“ There was- the sound of a scuffle in the second-cikss 
refreshment-room, so I went in and saw the most vil¬ 
lainous loafer that I ever set eyes on. His boots and 
breeches were plastered with mud and beer-stains. He 
wore a muddy-white dunghill sort of thing on his head, 
and it hung down in slips on his shoulders which were 
a good deal scratched. He was half in and half out of a 
shirt as nearly in two pieces as it could be, and he was 
begging the guard to look at the name on the tail of it. 
As he had rucked the shirt all over his head, I couldn’t at 
first see who he was, but I fancied that he was a man in 
the first stage of D. T. from the way he swore while he 
wrestled with his rags. When he turned round, and I had 
made allowances for a lump as big as a pork-pie over 
one eye, and some green war-paint on the face, and some 
violet stripes round the neck, I saw that it was Golightly. 


130 the arrest of lieutenant go lightly. 

He was very glad to see me,” said the Major, ‘‘and he 
hoped I would not tell the Mess about it. / didn’t, but 
you can, if you like, now that Golightly has gone Home.” 

Golightly spent the greater part of that summer in try¬ 
ing to get the Corporal and the two soldiers tried by 
Court-Martial for arresting an “officer and a gentleman.” 
They were, of course, very sorry for their error. But the 
tale leaked into the regimental canteen, and thence ran 
"»bout the Province. 


IN THE HOUHE OF SUDDHOO 


I3I 


IN THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO. 

A stone’s throw out on either hand 
From that well-ordered road we tread, 

And all the world is wild and strange ; 

Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite 
Shall bear us company to-night, 

For we have reached the Oldest Land 
Wherein the Powers of Darkness range. 

From the Dusk to the Dawn. 

The house of Suddhoo, near the Taksali Gate, is two* 
storied, with four carved windows of old* brown wood, 
and a flat roof You may recognize it by five red hand¬ 
prints arranged like the Five of Diamonds on the white¬ 
wash between the upper windows. Bhagwan Dass, the 
bunnia, and a man who says he gets his living by seal¬ 
cutting live in the lower story with a troop of wives, ser¬ 
vants, friends, and retainers. The two upper rooms used 
to be occupied by Janoo and Azizun and a little black 
and-tan terrier that was stolen from an Englishman’s house 
and given to Janoo by a soldier. To-day, only Janoo 
lives in the upper rooms. Suddhoo sleeps on the roof 
generally, except when he sleeps in the street. He used 
to go to Peshawar in the cold weather to visit his son, 
who sells curiosities near the Edwardes’ Gate, and then 
he slept under a real mud roof Suddhoo is a great friend 
of mine, because his cousin had a son who secured, thanks 
to rny recommendation, the post of head-messenger to a 
big firm in the Station. Suddhoo says that God will make 
me a Lieutenant-Governor one of these days. I daresay 
hiv prophecy will come true. He is very, very old, with 


32 


IN THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO. 


white hair and no teeth worth showing, and he has out 
lived his wits—outlived nearly everything except his fond' 
ness for his son at Peshawar. Janoo and Azizun are Kash- 
miris, Ladies of the City, and theirs was an ancient and 
more or less honorable profession ; but Azizun has since 
married a medical student from the North-West and has 
settled down to a most respectable life somewhere near 
Bareilly. Bhagwan Dass is an extortionate and an adul¬ 
terator. He is very rich. The man who is supposed to 
get his living by seal-cutting pretends to be very poor. 
This lets you know as much as is necessary of the four 
principal tenants in the house of Suddhoo. Then there 
is Me, of course; but I am only the chorus that comes 
in at the end to explain things. So I do not count. 

Suddhoo was not clever. The man who pretended to 
cut seals was the cleverest of them all—Bhagwan Dass 
only knew how to lie—except Janoo. She was also beau¬ 
tiful, but that was her own affair. 

Suddhoo’s son at Peshawar was attacked by pleurisy, 
and old Suddhoo was troubled. The seal-cutler man 
heard of Suddhoo’s anxiety and made capital out of it. 
He was abreast of the times. He got a friend in Pesha¬ 
war to telegraph daily accounts of the son’s health. And 
here the story begins. 

Suddhoo's cousins son told me, one evening, that 
Suddhoo wanted to see me ; that he was too old and 
feeble to come personally, and that I should be conferring 
an everlasting honor on the House of Suddhoo if I went 
to him. I went; but I think, seeing how well-off Suddhoo 
was then, that he might have sent something better than 
an ekka, which jolted fearfully, to haul out a future Lieu¬ 
tenant-Governor to the City on a muggy April evening. 
The ekka did not run quickly. It was full dark when we 
pulled up opposite the door of Ranjit Singh s Tomb near 


IN THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO 


133 


the main gate of the Fort. Here was Suddhoo and he 
said that, by reason of my condescension, it was abso¬ 
lutely certain that I should become a Lieutenant-Governor 
while my hair was yet black. Then we talked about the 
weather and the state of my health, and the wheat crops, 
for fifteen minutes, in the Huzuri Bagh, under the stars. 

Suddhoo came to the point at last. He said that Janoo 
had told him that there was an order of the Sirkar against 
magic, because it was feared that magic might one day 
kill the Empress of India. I didn’t know anything about 
the state of the law; but I fancied that something interest¬ 
ing was going to happen. I said that so far from magic 
being discouraged by the Government it was highly com¬ 
mended. The greatest officials of the State practised it 
themselves. (If the Financial Statement Isn’t magic, I 
don’t know what is.) Then, to encourage him further, I 
said that, if there was any jadoo afoot, I had not the least 
objection to giving it my countenance and sanction, and 
to seeing that it was clean jadoo —white magic, as dis¬ 
tinguished from the unclean jadoo which kills folk. It 
took a long time before Suddhoo admitted that this was 
just what he had asked me to come for. Then he told 
me, in jerks and quavers, that the man who said he cut 
seals was a sorcerer of the cleanest kind ; that every day 
he gave Suddhoo news of the sick son in Peshawar more 
quickly than the lightning could fly, and that this news 
was always corroborated by the letters. Further, that he 
had told Suddhoo how a great danger was threatening 
his son, which could be removed by clean jadoo ; and, of 
course, heavy payment. I began to see exactly how the 
land lay, and told Suddhoo that / also understood a little 
jadoo in the Western line, and would go to his house to 
see that everything was done decently and in order. We 
set off together ; and on the way Suddhoo told me that 


134 


IN THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO. 


he had paid the seal-cutter between one hundred and two 
hundred rupees already ; and the jadoo of that night 
would cost two hundred more. Which was cheap, he 
said, considering the greatness of his son’s danger ; but 
I do not think he meant it. 

The lights were all cloaked in the front of the house 
when we arrived. I could hear awful noises from behind 
the seal-cutter’s shop-front, as if some one were groaning 
his soul out. Suddhoo shook all over, and while we 
groped our way upstairs told me that the jadoo had 
begun. Janoo and Az^zun met us at the stair-head, 
and told us that the jadoO'^^oxV was coming off in their 
rooms, because there was more space there. Janoo is a 
lady*ot a freethinking turn of mind. She whispered 
that the jadoo was an invention to get money out of 
Suddhoo, and that the seal-cutter would go to a hot place 
when he died. Suddhoo was nearly crying with fear and 
old age. He kept walking up and down the room in the 
half light, repeating his son’s name over and over again, 
and asking Azizun if the seal-cutter ought not to make a 
reduction in the case of his own landlord. Janoo pulled 
me over to the shadow in the recess of the carved bow- 
windows. The boards were up, and the rooms were 
only lit by one tiny oil-lamp. There was no chance of 
my being seen if I stayed still. 

Presently, the groans below ceased, and we heard steps 
on the staircase. That was the seal-cutter. He stopped 
outside the door as the terrier barked and Azizun fumbled 
at the chain, and he told Suddhoo to blow out the lamp. 
This left the place in jet darkness, except for the red 
glow from the two kuqas that belonged to Janoo and 
Azizun. The seal-cutter came in, and I heard Suddhoo 
throw himself down on the floor and groan. Azizun 
caught her breath, and Janoo backed on to one of 


IN THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO. 


135 


the beds with a shudder. There was a clink of something 
metallic, and then shot up a pale blue-green flame near 
the ground. The light was just enough to show Azizun, 
pressed against one corner of the room with the terrier 
between her knees ; Janoo, with her hands clasped, lean¬ 
ing forward as she sat on the bed; Suddhoo, face down, 
quivering, and the seal-cutter. 

I hope I may never see another man like that seal- 
cutter. He was stripped to the waist, with a wreath ot 
white jasmine as thick as my wrist round his forehead, a 
salmon colored loin-cloth round his middle, and a steel 
bangle on each ankle. This was not awe-inspiring. It 
was the face of the man that turned me cold. It was 
blue-gray in the first place. In the second, the eyes were 
rolled back till you could only see the whites of them ; 
and, in the third, the face was the face of a demon—a 
ghoul—anything you please except of the sleek, oily old 
ruffian who sat in the day-time over his turning-lathe 
downstairs. He was lying on his stomach with his arms 
turned and crossed behind him, as if he had been thrown 
down pinioned. His head and neck were the only parts 
of him off the floor. They were nearly at right angles to 
the body, like the head of a cobra at spring. It was 
ghastly. In the centre of the room, on the bare earth floor, 
stood a big, deep, brass basin, with a pale blue-green light 
floating in the centre like a night-light. Round that 
basin the man on the floor wriggled himself three times. 
How he did it I do not know. I could see the muscles 
ripple along his spine and fall smooth again ; but I could 
not see any other motion. The head seemed the only 
thing alive about him, except that slow curl and uncurl 
of the laboring back-muscles. Janoo from the bed was 
breathing seventy to the minute ; Azizun held her hands 
before her eyes; and old Suddhoo, fingering at the dirt 


136 the house of suddhoo, 

that had got into his white beard, was crying to himself. 
The horror of it was that the creeping, crawly thing made 
no sound—only crawled ! And, remember, this lasted for 
ten minutes, while the terrier whined, and Azizun shud¬ 
dered, and Janoo gasped and Suddhoo cried. 

I felt the hair lift at the back of my head, and my heart 
thump like a thermantidote paddle. Luckily, the seal- 
cutter betrayed himself by his most impressive trick and 
made me calm again. After he had finished that un¬ 
speakable triple crawl, he stretched his head away from 
the floor as high as he could, and sent out a jet of fire from 
his nostrils. Now I knew how fire-spouting is done—I 
can do it myself—so I felt at ease. The business was a 
fraud. If he had only kept to that crawl without trying to 
raise the effect, goodness knows what I might not have 
thought. Both the girls shrieked at the jet of fire and the 
head dropped, chin-down on the floor with a thud ; the 
whole body lying then like a corpse with its arms trussed. 
There was a pause of five full minutes after this, and the 
blue-green flame died down. Janoo stooped to settle one 
of her anklets, while Azizun turned her face to the wall 
and took the terrier in her arms. Suddhoo put out an 
arm mechanically to Janoo’s Jiuqa, and she slid it across 
the floor with her foot. Directly above the body and on 
the wall, were a couple of flaming portraits, in stamped 
paper frames, of the Queen and the Prince of Wales. They 
looked down on the performance, and, to my thinking, 
seemed to heighten the grotesqueness of it all. 

Just when the silence was getting unendurable, the 
body turned over and rolled away from the basin to the 
side of the room, where it lay stomach-up. There was a 
faint “ plop” from the basin—exactly like the noise a fish 
makes when it takes a fly—and the green light in the cen¬ 
tre revived. 


IN THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO. 


137 

I looked at the basin, and saw, bobbing in the water 
the dried, shrivelled, black head of a native baby—open 
eyes, open mouth and shaved scalp. It was worse, being 
so very sudden, than the crawling exhibition. We had 
no time to say anything before it began to speak. 

Read Poe’s account of the voice that came from the 
mesmerized dying man, and you will realize less than 
one-half of the horror of that head’s voice. 

There was an interval of a second or two between each 
word, and a sort of “ring, ring, ring,” in the note of the 
voice like the timbre of a bell. It pealed slowly, as if 
talking to itself, for several minutes before I got rid of 
my cold sweat. Then the blessed solution struck me. I 
looked at the body lying near the doorway, and saw, just 
where the hollow of the throat joins on the shoulders, a 
muscle that had nothing to do with any man’s regular 
breathing, twitching away steadily. The whole thing 
was a careful reproduction of the Egyptian teraphin that 
one reads about sometimes ; and the voice was as clever 
and as appalling a piece of ventriloquism as one could 
wish to hear. All this time the head was “lip-lip-lap¬ 
ping” against the side of the basin, and speaking. It 
told Suddhoo, on his face again whining, of his son’s ill¬ 
ness and of the state of the illness up to the evening of 
that very night. I always shall respect the seal-cutter for 
keeping so faithfully to the time of the Peshawar tele¬ 
grams. It went on to say that skilled doctors were night 
and day watching over the man’s life; and that he would 
eventually recover if the fee to the potent sorcerer, whose 
servant was the head in the basin, were doubled. 

Here the mistake from the artistic point of view came 
in. To ask for twice your stipulated fee in a voice that 
Lazarus might have used when he rose from the dead, is 
absurd. Janoo, who is really a woman of masculine inteb 


IN THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO. 


138 

lect, saw this as quickly as I did. I heard her say ** Ash 
nahin 1 Fareib !” scornfully under her breath ; and just 
as she said so, the light in the basin died out, the head 
stopped talking, and we heard the room door creak on its 
hinges. Then Janoo struck a match, lit the lamp, and 
we saw that head, basin, and seal-cutter were gone. 
Suddhoo was wringing his hands and explaining to any 
one who cared to listen, that, if his chances of eternal 
salvation depended on it, he could not raise another two 
hundred rupees. Azizun was nearly in hysterics in the 
corner ; while Janoo sat down composedly on one of the 
beds to discuss the probabilities of the whole thing being 
?ihinao, or *‘make-up.” 

I explained as much as I knew of the seal-cutter's way 
of jadoo ; but her argument was much more simple 
“The magic that is always demanding gifts is no true 
magic,” said she. “My mother told me that the only 
potent love-spells are those which are told you for love. 
This seal-cutter man is a liar and a devil. I dare not 
tell, do anything, or get anything done, because I am in 
debt to Bhagwan Dass the bunnia for two gold rings 
and a heavy anklet. I must get my food from his shop. 
The seal-cutter is the friend of Bhagwan Dass, and he 
would poison my food. A fool’s jadoo has been going 
on for ten days, and has cost Suddhoo many rupees 
each night. The seal-cutter used black hens and lemons 
and mantras before. He never showed us anything like 
this till to- night. Azizun is a fool, and will be a pur 
dahnashin soon. Suddhoo has lost his strength and his 
wits. See now ! I had hoped to get from Suddhoo many 
rupees while he lived, and many more after his death; 
and behold, he is spending everything on that offspring 
of a devil and a she-ass, the seal-cutter 1 ” 

Here I said:—“ But what induced Suddhoo to drag me 


IN THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO, 


139 


into the business ? Of course I can speak to the seal-cut¬ 
ter, and he shall refund. The whole thing is child’s talk 
«—shame—and senseless. ” 

“Suddhoo is an old child,” said Janoo. “He has 
lived on the roofs these seventy years and is as senseless 
as a milch-goat. He brought you here to assure him¬ 
self that he was not breaking any law of the Sirkar, 
whose salt he ate many years ago. He worships the 
dust off the feet of the seal-cutter, and that cow-devourer 
has forbidden him to go and see his son. What does 
Suddhoo know of your laws or the lightning-post? I 
have to watch his money going day by day to that lying 
beast below. ” 

Janoo stamped her foot on the floor and nearly cried 
with vexation ; while Suddhoo was whimpering under 
a blanket in the corner, and Azizun was trying to guide 
the pipe-stem to his foolish old mouth. 


Now the case stands thus. Unthinkingly, I have 
laid myself open to the charge of aiding and abetting 
the seal-cutter in obtaining money under false pretences, 
which is forbidden by Section 420 of the Indian Penal 
Code. I am helpless in the matter for these reasons, I 
cannot inform the Police. What witnesses would sup¬ 
port my statements ? Janoo refuses flatly, and Azizun is 
a veiled woman somewhere near Bareilly—lost in this 
big India of ours. I dare not again take the law into my 
own hands, and speak to the seal-cutter; for certain am 
I that, not only would Suddhoo disbelieve me, but this 
step would end in the poisoning of Janoo, who is bound 
hand and foot by her debt to the bunnia. Suddhoo is an 
old dotard ; and whenever we meet mumbles my idiotic 
joke that the Sirkar rather patronizes the Black Art than 
otherwise. His son is well now; but Suddhoo is com- 



140 


IN THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO. 


pletely under the influence of the seal-cutter, by whose 
advice he regulates the affairs of his life. Janoo watches 
daily the money that she hoped to wheedle out of Sud- 
dhoo taken by the seal-cutter, and becomes daily more 
furious and sullen. 

She will never tell, because she dare not; but, unless 
something happens to prevent her, I am afraid that the 
seal-cutter will die of cholera—the white arsenic kind— 
about the middle of May, And thus I shall have to be 
privy to a murder in the House of Suddhoo. 


HIS WEDDED WIFE- 




HIS WEDDED WIFE. 

Cry, ** Murder ! ” in the market-place, and each 

Will turn upon his neighbor anxious eyes 

That ask :—“ Art thou the man ? ” We hunted Cain, 

Some centuries ago, across the world, 

That bred the fear our own misdeeds maintain 
To-day. 

Vibari's Moralities, 

Shakespeare says somethings about worms, or it may 
be giants or beetles, turning if you tread on them too 
severely, The safest plan is never to tread on a worm— 
not even on the last new subaltern from Home, with his 
buttons hardly out of their tissue paper, and the red of 
sappy English beef in his cheeks. This is the story ot 
the worm that turned. For the sake of brevity, we will 
call Henry Augustus Ramsay Faizanne, “The Worm, 
although he really was an exceedingly pretty boy, without 
a hair on his face, and with a waist like a girl’s, when he 
came out to the Second “ Shikarris ” and was made un¬ 
happy in several ways. The “Shikarris” are a high- 
caste regiment, and you must be able to do things well— 
play a banjo, or ride more than little, or sing, or act—to 
get on with them. 

The Worm did nothing except fall off his pony, and 
knock chips out of gate-posts with his trap. Even that 
became monotonous after a time. He objected to 
whist, cut the cloth at billiards, sang out of tune, kept 
very much to himself, and wrote to his Mamma and sis¬ 
ters at Home. Four of these five things were vices which 


HIS WEDDED WIFE. 


142 

the “ Shikarris” objected to and set themselves to eradi 
cate. Everyone knows how subalterns are, by brother 
subalterns, softened and not permitted to be ferocious. It 
is good and wholesome, and does no one any harm, un¬ 
less tempers are lost; and then there is trouble. There 
was a man once—but that is another story. 

The “ Shikarris’' shikarred The Worm very much, and 
he bore everything without winking. He was so good 
and so anxious to learn, and flushed so pink, that his 
education was cut short, and he was left to his own de¬ 
vices by everyone except the Senior Subaltern who con¬ 
tinued to make life a burden to The Worm. The Senior 
Subaltern meant no harm ; but his chaff was coarse, and 
he didn’t quite unde^-stand where to stop. He had been 
waiting too long for his Company ; and that always sours 
a man. Also he was in love, which made him worse. 

One day, after he had borrowed The Worm s trap for 
a lady who never existed, had used it himself all the after¬ 
noon, had sent a note to The Worm, purporting to come 
from the lady, and was telling the Mess all about it. The 
Worm rose in his place and said, in his quiet, lady-like 
voice :—“ That was a very pretty sell; but I’ll lay you a 
month’s pay to a month’s pay when you get your step, 
that I work a sell on you that you’ll remember for the rest 
of yoir days, and the Regiment after you when you’re 
dead or broke,” The Worm wasn’t angry in the least, and 
the rest of the Mess shouted. Then the Senior Subaltern 
looked at The Worm from the boots upwards, and down 
again and said: Done, Baby.” The Worm took the rest 
of the Mess to witness that the bet had been taken, and 
retired into a book with a sweet smile. 

Two months passed, and the Senior Subaltern still 
educated The Worm, who began to move about a little 
more as the hot weather came on. I have said that the 


HIS WEDDED WIFE, 


143 

Senior Subaltern was in love. The curious thing is that 
a girl was in love with the Senior Subaltern. Though the 
Colonel said awful things, and the Majors snorted, and 
married Captains looked unutterable wisdom, and the 
juniors scoffed, those two were engaged. 

The Senior Subaltern was so pleased with getting his 
Company and his acceptance at the same time that he 
forgot to bother The Worm, The girl was a pretty girl, 
and had money of her own. She does not come into this 
story at all. 

One night, at beginning of the hot weather, all the 
Mess, except The Worm who had gone to his own room 
to write Home letters, were sitting on the platform out¬ 
side the Mess House. The Band had finished playing, 
but no one wanted to go in. And the Captains’ wives 
were there also. The folly of a man in love is unlimited. 
The Senior Subaltern had been holding forth on the merits 
of the girl he was engaged to, and the ladies were purring 
approval, while the men yawned, when there was a rustle 
of skirts in the dark, and a tired, faint voice lifted itself. 

“ Where’s my husband ? ” 

I do not wish in the least to reflect on the morality of 
the “ Shikarris ; ” but it is on record that four men jumped 
up as if they had been shot. Three of them were married 
men. Perhaps they were afraid that their wives had come 
from Home unbeknownst. The fourth said that he had 
acted on the impulse of the moment. He explained this 
afterwards. 

Then the voice cried:—“ Oh Lionel! ” Lionel was the 
Senior Subaltern’s name. A woman came into the little 
circle of light by the candles on the peg-tables, stretching 
out her hands to the dark where the Senior Subaltern was, 
and sobbing. We rose to our feet, feeling that things 
were going to happen and ready to believe the worst. In 


144 


HIS WEDDED WIFE. 


this bad, small world of ours, one knows so little of the 
life of the next man—which, after all, is entirely his own 
concern—that one is not surprised when a crash comes. 
Anything might turn up any day for anyone. Perhaps 
the Senior Subaltern had been trapped in his youth. Men 
are crippled that way occasionally. We didn’t know ; we 
wanted to hear; and the Captains’ wives were as anxious 
as we. If he had been trapped, he was to be excused ; 
for the woman from nowhere, in the dusty shoes and gray 
travelling dress, was very lovely, with black hair and 
great eyes full of tears. She was tall, with a fine figure, 
and her voice had a running sob in it pitiful to hear. As 
soon as the Senior Subaltern stood up, she threw her arms 
round his neck, and called him “ my darling ” and said 
she could not bear waiting alone in England, and his 
letters were so short and cold, and she was his to the 
end of the world, and would he forgive her .? This did not 
sound quite like a lady’s way of speaking. It was too 
demonstrative. 

Things seemed black indeed, and the Captains’ wives 
peered under their eyebrows at the Senior Subaltern, and 
the Colonel’sface set like the Day of Judgment framed in 
gray bristles, and no one spoke for a while. 

Next the Colonel said, very shortly :— “ Well, Sir } ” 
and the woman sobbed afresh. The Senior Subaltern was 
half choked with the arms round his neck, but he gasped 
out :—It’s a d—d lie ! I never had a wife in my life ! ” 
“ Don’t swear,” said the Colonel. “ Come into the Mess. 
We must sift this clear somehow,” and he sighed to 
hinself, for he believed in his “ Shikarris,” did the Col¬ 
onel. 

We trooped into the ante-room, under the full lights, 
and there we saw how beautiful the woman was. She 
stood up in the middle of us all, sometimes choking with 


HIS WEDDED WIFE. 


145 

crying, then hard and proud, and then holding out her 
arms to the Senior Subaltern. It was like the fourth act 
of a tragedy. She told us how the Senior Subaltern had 
married her when he was Home on leave eighteen months 
before ; and she seemed to know all that we knew, and 
more too, of his people and his past life. He was white 
and ashy gray, trying now and again to break into the 
torrent of her words ; and we, noting how lovely she was 
and what a criminal he looked, esteemed him a beast ot 
the worst kind. We felt sorry for him, thcmgh. 

I shall never forget the indictment of the Senior 
Subaltern by his wife. Nor will he. It was so sudden, 
rushing out of the dark, unannounced, into our dull 
lives. The Captains’ wives stood back ; but their eyes 
were alight, and you could see that they had already 
convicted and sentenced the Senior Subaltern. The 
colonel seemed five years older. One Major was shad¬ 
ing his eyes with his hand and watching the woman 
from underneath it. Another was chewing his moustache 
and smiling quietly as if he were witnessing a play. 
Full in the open space in the centre, by the whist-tables, 
the Senior Subaltern’s terrier was hunting for fleas. I 
remember all this as clearly as though a photograph 
were in my hand. I remember the look of horror on 
the Senior Subaltern’s face. It was rather like seeing a 
man hanged ; but much more interesting. Finally, the 
woman wound up by saying that the Senior Subaltern 
carried a double F. M. in tattoo on his left shoulder. 
We all knew that, and to our innocent minds it seemed 
to clinch the matter. But one of the Bachelor Majors 
said very politely :—“I presume that your marriage- 
certificate would be more to the purpose } ” 

That roused the woman. She stood up and sneered 
at the Senior Subaltern for ^ cur, and abused the Major 

10 


146 


HIS WEDDED WIFE. 


and the Colonel and all the rest. Then she wept, and 
then she pulled a paper from her breast, saying impe¬ 
rially :— “Take that! And let my husband—my law¬ 
fully wedded husband—read it aloud—if he dare 1 ” 

There was a hush, and the men looked into each other’s 
eyes as the Senior Subaltern came forward in a dazed 
and dizzy way, and took the paper. We were wonder¬ 
ing, as we stared, whether there was anything against 
any one of us that might turn up later on. The Senior 
Subaltern’s throat was dry ; but, as he ran his eye over 
the paper, he broke out into a hoarse cackle of relief, 
and said to the woman :—‘^You young blackguard!” 

But the woman had fled through a door, and on the 
paper was written :—“ This is to certify that I, The 
Worm, have paid in full my debts to the Senior Sub¬ 
altern, and, further, that the Senior Subaltern is my 
debtor, by agreement on the 23rd of February, as by 
the Mess attested, to the extent of one month’s Captain’s 
pay, in the lawful currency of the India Empire.” 

Then a deputation set off for The Worm’s quarters 
and found him, betwixt and between, unlacing his stays, 
with the hat, wig, serge dress, &c., on the bed. He 
came over as he was, and the “Shikarris” shouted till 
the Gunners’ Mess sent over to know if they might have 
a share of the fun. I think we were all, except the 
Colonel and the Senior Subaltern, a little disappointed 
that the scandal had come to nothing. But that is 
human nature. There could be no two words about 
The Worm’s acting. It leaned as near to a nasty 
tragedy as anything this side of a joke can. When 
most of the Subalterns sat,upon him with sofa-cushions 
to find out why he had not said that acting was his 
strong point, he answered very quietly :—“I don’t think 
you ever asked me. I used to act at Home with my 


HIS WEDDED WIFE. 


147 


sisters.” But no acting with girls could account for 
The Worm’s display that night. Personally, I think it 
was in bad taste. Besides being dangerous. There is 
no sort of use in playing with fire, even for fun. 

The “ Shikarris ” made him President of the Regi¬ 
mental Dramatic Club ; and, when the Senior Subaltern 
paid up his debt, which he did at onCe, The Worm sank 
the money in scenery and dresses. He was a good 
Worm ; and the “ Shikarris ” are proud of him. The 
only drawback is that he has been christened “ Mrs. 
Senior Subaltern ; ” and, as there are now two Mrs. Senior 
Subalterns in the Station, this is sometimes confusing to 
strangers. 

Later on, I will tell you of a case something like this, 
but with all the jest left out and nothing in it but real 

trouble. 


148 


THE BROKEN-LINK HANDICAP, 


THE BROKEN-LINK HANDICAP. 

While the snaffle holds, or the “long-neck ” stings, 

While the big beam tilts, or the last bell rings, 

While horses are horses to train and to race, 

Then women and wine take a second place 
For me—for me— 

While a short “ ten-three ” 

Has a field to squander or fence to face ! 

Song of the G. R. 

There are more ways of running a horse to suit youi 
book than pulling his head off in the straight. Some men 
forget this. Understand clearly that all racing is rotten— 
as everything connected with losing money must be. 
Out here, in addition to its inherent rottenness, it has the 
merit of being two-thirds sham ; looking pretty on paper 
only. Everyone knows everyone else far too well for 
business purposes. How on earth can you rack and harry 
and post a man for his losings, when you are fond of his 
wife, and live in the same Station with him ? He says, 
“on the Monday following,” “I can’t settle just yet.” 
You say, “ All right, old man,” and think yourself lucky if 
you pull off nine hundred out of a two-thousand-rupee 
debt. Any way you look at it, Indian racing is immoral, 
and expensively immoral. Which is much worse. If a 
man wants your money, he ought to ask for it, or send 
round a subscription-list, instead of juggling about the 
country, with an Australian larrikin ; a “brumby,” with 
as much breed as the boy ; a brace of chumars in gold- 
laced caps; three or four <?^^^^-ponies with hogged 
manes, and a switch-tailed demirep of a mare called Arab 


THE BROKEN-LINK RADIOAP. 


149 

because she has a kink in her flag". Racing leads to the 
shroff quicker than anything else. But if you have no 
conscience and no sentiments, and good hands, and 
some knowledge of pace, and ten years’ experience of 
horses, and several thousand rupees a month, I believe 
that you can occasionally contrive to pay your shoeing- 
bills. 

Did you ever know Shackles—b. w. g., 15. 13-8— 
coarse, loose, mule-like ears—barrel as long as a gate¬ 
post—tough as a telegraph-wire—and the queerest brute 
that ever looked through a bridle? He was of no brand, 
being one of an ear-nicked mob taken into the Bu¬ 
cephalus at £4-105. a head to make up freight, and sold 
raw and out of condition at Calcutta for Rs. 275. People 
who lost money on him called him a brumby; ” but if 
ever any horse had Harpoon’s shoulders and The Gin’s 
temper. Shackles was that horse. Two miles was his 
own particular distance. He trained himself, ran him¬ 
self, and rode himself; and, if his jockey insulted him by 
giving him hints, he shut up at once and bucked the boy off. 
He objected to dictation. Two or three of his owners did 
not understand this, and lost money in consequence. At 
last he was bought by a man who discovered that, if a 
race was to be won. Shackles, and Shackles only, would 
win it in his own way, so long as his jockey sat 
still. This man had a riding-boy called Brunt—a lad 
from Perth, West Australia—and he taught Brunt, with a 
trainer’s whip, the hardest thing a jock can learn—to sit 
still, to sit still, and to keep on sitting still. When Brunt 
fairly grasped this truth. Shackles devastated the country. 
No weight could stop him at his own distance; and the 
fame of Shackles spread from Ajmir in the South, to 
Chedputter in the North. There was no horse like 
Shackles, so long as he was allowed to do his work in 


150 


THE BROKEN-LINK HANDICAP. 


his own way. But he was beaten in the end; and the 
story of his fall is enough to make angels weep. 

At the lower end of the Chedputter race-course, just 
before the turn into the straight, the track passes close to 
a couple of old brick-mounds enclosing a funnel-shaped 
hollow. The big end of the funnel is not six feet from 
the railings on the off-side. The astounding peculiarity 
of the course is that, if you stand at one particular place, 
about half a mile away, inside the course, and speak at 
ordinary pitch, your voice just hits the funnel of the brick- 
mounds and makes a curious whining echo there. A 
man discovered this one morning by accident while out 
training with a friend. He marked the place to stand 
and speak from with a couple of bricks, and he kept his 
knowledge to himself. Every peculiarity of a course is 
worth remembering in a country where rats play the mis¬ 
chief with the elephant-litter, and Stewards build jumps 
to suit their own stables. This man ran a very fairish 
country-bred, a long, racking high mare with the temper 
of a fiend, and the paces of an airy wandering seraph—a 
drifty, glidy stretch. The mare was, as a delicate tribute 
to Mrs. Reiver, called “The Lady Regula Baddun ”—or 
for short, Regula Baddun. 

Shackles’ jockey, Brunt, was a quiet well-behaved boy, 
but his nerve had been shaken. He began his career by 
riding jump-races in Melbourne, where a few Stewards 
want lynching, and was one of the jockeys who came 
through the awful butchery—perhaps you will recollect it 
—of the Maribyrnong Plate. The walls were colonial 
ramparts—logs of jarrah spiked into masonry—with 
wings as strong as Church buttresses. Once in his stride, 
a horse had to jump or fall. He couldn’t run out. In the 
Maribyrnong Plate, twelve horses were jammed at the 
second wall. Red Hat, leading, fell this side, and threw 


THE BROKEN-LINK HANDICAP. 


15I 

out The Glen, and the ruck came up behind and the space 
between wing and wing was one struggling, screaming, 
kicking shambles. Four jockeys were taken out dead ; 
three were very badly hurt, and Brunt was among the 
three. He told the story of the Maribyrnong Plate some¬ 
times ; and when he described how Whalley on Red Hat, 
said, as the mare fell under him :—“ God ha’ mercy. I’m 
done for ! ” and how, next instant, Sithee There and 
White Otter had crushed the life out of poor Whalley, and 
the dust hid a small hell of men and horses, no one mar¬ 
velled that Brunt had dropped jump-races and Australia 
together. Regula Baddun’s owner knew that story by 
heart Brunt never varied it in the telling. He had no 
education. 

Shackles came to the Chedputter Autumn races one 
year, and his owner walked about insulting the sports¬ 
men of Chedputter generally, till they went to the Honor¬ 
ary Secretary in a body and said ;—“Appoint handicap¬ 
pers, and arrange a race which shall break Shackles and 
humble the pride of his owner.” The Districts rose 
against Shackles and sent up of their best; Ousel who 
was supposed to be able to do his mile in 1-53 ; Petard, 
the stud-bred, trained by a cavalry regiment who knew 
how to train ; Gringalet, the ewe-lamb of the 75th ; Bob¬ 
olink, the pride of Peshawar ; and many others. 

They called that race The Broken-Link Handicap, be¬ 
cause it was to smash Shackles ; and the handicappers 
piled on the weights, and the Fund gave eight hundred 
rupees, and the distance was “round the course for all 
horses.” Shackles’ owner said :—“You can arrange the 
race with regard to Shackles only. So long as you don’t 
bury him under weight-cloths, I don’t mind.” “Regula 
Baddun’s owner said :—“ I throw in my mare to fret 
Ousel. Six furlongs is Regula’s distance, and she will 


THE BROKEN-LINK HANDICAP, 


152 

then lie down and die. So also will Ousel, for his jockey 
doesn’t understand a waiting race.” Now, this was a lie, 
for Regula had been in work for two months at Dehra, 
and her chances were good, always supposing that 
Shackles broke a blood-vessel —or Brunt moved on him. 

The plunging in the lotteries was fine. They filled 
eight thousand-rupee lotteries on the Broken-link Han¬ 
dicap, and the account in the Pioneer said that ‘ ‘ favor¬ 
itism was divided. ” In plain English, the various con¬ 
tingents were wild on their respective horses ; for the 
Handicappers had done their work well. The Honor¬ 
ary Secretary shouted himself hoarse through the din ; 
and the smoke of the cheroots was like the smoke, and 
the rattling of the dice-boxes like the rattle of small- 
arm fire. 

Ten horses started—very level—and Regula Baddun’s 
owner cantered out on his hack to a place inside the 
circle of the course, where tv^o bricks had been thrown. 
He faced towards the brick-mounds at the lower end of 
the course and waited. 

The story of the running is in the Pioneer. At the 
end of the first mile. Shackles crept out of the ruck, 
well on the outside, ready to get round the turn, lay 
hold of the bit and spin up the straight before the 
others knew he had got away. Brunt was sitting still, 
perfectly happy, listening to the drum, drum, drum** 
of the hoofs behind, and knowing that, in about twenty 
strides. Shackles would draw one deep breath and go 
up the last half-mile like the “Flying Dutchman.” As 
Shackles went short to take the turn and came abreast 
of the brick-mound. Brunt heard, above the noise of the 
wind in his ears, a whining, wailing voice on the offside, 
saying :—“God ha’ mercy, Tm done for ! ” In one stride. 
Brunt saw the whole seething smash of the Maribyr* 


THE BKOKEHLINK HANDICAP. 


nong Plate before him, started in his saddle and gave a 
yell of terror. The start brought the heels into Shackles" 
side, and the scream hurt Shackles’ feelings. He 
couldn’t stop dead ; but he put out his feet and slid alone 
for fifty yards, and then, very gravely and judicially, 
bucked off Brunt—a shaking, terror-stricken lump, 
while Regula Baddun made a neck-and-neck race 
with Bobolink up the straight, and won by a short 
head—Petard a bad third. Shackles’ owner, in the 
Stand, tried to think that his field-glasses had gone 
wrong. Regula Baddun’s owner, waiting by the two 
bricks, gave one deep sigh of relief, and cantered back 
to the Stand. He had won, in lotteries and bets, about 
fifteen thousand. 

It was a Broken-link Handicap with a vengeance. 
It broke nearly all the men concerned, and nearly broke 
the heart of Shackles’ owner. He went down to in¬ 
terview Brunt. The boy lay, livid and gasping with 
fright, where he had tumbled off. The sin of losing the 
race never seemed to strike him. All he knew was 
that Whalley had “called” him, that the “call” was a 
warning ; and, were he cut in two for it, he would never 
get up again. His nerve had gone altogether, and he 
only asked his master to give him a good thrashing, and 
let him go. He was fit for nothing, he said. He got 
his dismissal, and crept up to the paddock, white as 
chalk, with blue lips, his knees giving way under him. 
People said nasty things in the paddock; but Brunt 
never heeded. He changed into tweeds, took his stick 
and went down the road, still shaking with fright, and 
muttering over and over again :—“God ha’ mercy. I’m 
done for ! ” To the best of my knowledge and belief he 
spoke the truth. 

So now you know how the Broken-link Handicap was 


THE BROKEN-LINK HANDICAP. 


154 

run and won. Of course you don’t believe it. You 
would credit anything about Russia’s designs on India, 
or the recommendations of the Currency Commission ; 
but a little bit of sober fact is more than you can stand 


BEYOND THE PALE, 


155 


BEYOND THE PALE. 

‘ Love heeds not caste nor sleep a broken bed. I went in search of love 
and lost myself.” 

Hindu Proverb. 

A MAN should, whatever happens, keep to his own 
caste, race and breed. Let the White go to the White and 
the Black to the Black. Then, whatever trouble falls is in 
the ordinary course of things—neither sudden, alien nor 
unexpected. 

This is the story of a man who wilfully stepped beyond 
the safe limits of decent every-day society, and paid for it 
heavily. 

He knew too much in the first instance ; and he saw too 
much in the second. He took too deep an interest it 
native life ; but he will never do so again. 

Deep away in the heart of the City, behind Jitha Megji’s 
husiee, lies Amir Nath’s Gully, which ends in a dead-wall 
pierced by one grated window. At the head of the Gully 
is a big cowbyre, and the walls on either side of the Gully 
are without windows. Neither Suchet Singh nor Gaur 
Chand approve of their women-folk looking into the world. 
If Durga Charan had been of their opinion, he would have 
been a happier man to-day, and little Bisesa would have 
been able to knead her own bread. Her room looked out 
through the grated window into the narrow dark Gully 
where the sun never came and where the buft'aloes wal¬ 
lowed in the blue slime. She was a widow, about fifteen 


BEYOND THE PALE. 


156 

years old, and she prayed the Gods, day and night, to send 
her a lover ; for she did not approve of living alone. 

One day, the man—Trejago his name was—came into 
Amir Nath’s Gully on an aimless wandering; and, after he 
had passed the buffaloes, stumbled over a big heap of 
cattle-food. 

Then he saw that the Gully ended in a trap, and heard 
a little laugh from behind the grated window. It was a 
pretty little laugh, and Trejago, knowing that, for all 
practical purposes, the old Arabian Nights are good guides 
went forward to the window, and whispered that verse of 
“ The Love Song of Har Dyal” which begins :— 

Can a man stand upright in the face of the naked Sun ; or a Lover in 
the Presence of his Beloved ? 

If my feet fail me, O Heart of my Heart, am I to blame, being blinded 
by the glimpse of your beauty ? 

There came the faint tchinks of a woman bracelets from 
behind the grating, and a little voice went on with the 
song at the fifth verse :— 

Alas! alas! Can the Moon tell the Lotus of her love when the Gate of 
Heaven is shut and the clouds gather for the rains ? 

They have taken my Beloved, and driven her with the pack-horses to 
the North. 

There are iron chains on the feet that were set on my heart. 

Call to the bowmen to make ready- 

The voice stopped suddenly, and Trejago walked out of 
Amir Nath’s Gully, wondering wfio in the world could have 
capped “The Love Song of Har Dyal” so neatly. 

Next morning, as he was driving to office, an old 
woman threw a packet into his dog-cart. In the packet 
was the half of a broken glass-bangle, one flower of 
the blood-red dhak, a pinch of bhusa or cattle-food, and 
tleven cardamoms. That packet was a letter—not a 
clumsy compromising letter, but an innocent unintelli¬ 
gible lover’s epistle. 



BEYOND THE PALE. 


157 


Trejago knew far too much about these things, as I 
have said. No Englishman should be able to translate 
object-letters. But Trejago spread all the trifles on the 
lid of his office-box and began to puzzle them out. 

A broken glass-bangle stands for a Hindu widow all 
India over ; because, when her husband dies, a woman’s 
bracelets are broken on her wrists. Trejago saw the 
meaning of the little bit of the glass. The flower of the 
dhak means diversely “desire,” “come,” “write,” or 
“ danger,” according to the other things with it. One 
cardamon means “jealousy;” but when any article is 
duplicated in an object-letter, it loses its symbolic mean¬ 
ing and stands merely for one of a number indicating 
lime, or, if incense, curds, or saffron be sent also, place. 
The message ran then:—“A widow —dhak flower and 
hhusa —at eleven o’clock.” The pinch of enlight¬ 

ened Trejago. He saw—this kind of letter leaves much 
to instinctive knowledge—that the hhusa referred to the 
big heap of cattle-food over which he had fallen in Amir 
Nath’s Gully, and that the message must come from the 
person behind the grating ; she being a widow. So the 
message ran then :—“ A widow, in the Gully in which 
is the heap of hhusa, desires you to come at eleven 
o’clock. ” 

Trejago threw all the rubbish into the fire-place and 
laughed. He knew that men in the East do not make 
love under windows at eleven in the forenoon, nor do 
women fix appointments a week in advance. So he 
went, that very night at eleven, into Amir Nath’s Gully, 
clad in a hoorka, which cloaks a man as well as a woman. 
Directly the gongs in the City made the hour, the little 
voice behind the grating took up “ The Love Song of Har 
Dyal ” at the verse where the Panthan girl calls upon Har 
Dyal to return. The song is really pretty in the Ver- 


BEYOND THE PALE. 


158 

nacular. In English you miss the wail of it. It runs 
something like this— 

Alone upon the housetops, to the North 

I turn and watch the lightning in the sky,— 

The glamour of thy footsteps in the North, 

Come back to jne^ Beloved^ or I die ! 

Below my feet the still bazar is laid 
Far, far below the weary camels lie,— 

The camels and the captives of thy raid, 

Come back to me^ Beloved^ or 1 die ! 

My father’s wife is old and harsh with years. 

And drudge of all my father’s house am I.— 

My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears, 

Co7ne back to me^ Beloved^ or I die ! 

As the song stopped, Trejago stepped up under the 
grating and whispered :—“I am here.” 

Bisesa was good to look upon. 

That night was the beginning of many strange things, 
and of a double life so wild that Trejago to-day some¬ 
times wonders if it were not all a dream. Bisesa or her 
old handmaiden who had thrown the object-letter had 
detached the heavy grating from the brick-work of 
the wall; so that the window slid inside, leaving only a 
square of raw masonry into which an active man might 
climb. 

In the day-time, Trejago drove through his routine of 
office-work, or put on his calling-clothes and called on 
the ladies of the Station ; wondering how long they would 
know him if they knew of poor little Bisesa. At night, 
when all the City was still, came the walk under the evil¬ 
smelling boorka, the patrol through Jitha Megji’s hustee, 
the quick turn into Amir Nath’s Gully between the sleep¬ 
ing cattle and the dead walls, and then, last of all, Bisesa, 
and the deep, even breathing of the old woman who slept 


BEYOND THE PALE. 


159 

outside the door of the bare little room that Durga Charan 
allotted to his sister’s daughter. Who or what Durga 
Charan was, Trejago never inquired ; and why in the 
world he was not discovered and knifed never occurred to 

him till his madness was over, and Bisesa.But 

this comes later. 

Bisesa was an endless delight to Trejago. She was as 
ignorant as a bird ; and her distorted versions of the ru¬ 
mors from the outside world that had reached her in her 
room, amused Trejago almost as much as her lisping at¬ 
tempts to pronounce his name—“Christopher.” The first 
syllable was always more than she could manage, and 
she made funny little gestures with her roseleaf hands, as 
one throwing the name away, and then, kneeling before 
Trejago asked him, exactly as an English woman would 
do, if he were sure he. loved her. Trejago swore that he 
loved her more than any one else in the world. Which 
was true. 

After a month of this folly, the exigencies of his other 
life compelled Trejago to be especially attentive to a lady 
of his acquaintance. You may take it for a fact that any¬ 
thing of this kind is not only noticed and discussed by a 
man’s own race but by some hundred and fifty natives as 
well. Trejago had to walk with this lady and talk to her 
at the Band-stand, and once or twice to drive with her; 
never for an instant dreaming that this would affect his 
dearer out-of-the-way life. But the news flew, in the 
usual mysterious fashion, from mouth to mouth, till 
Bisesa’s duenna heard of it and told Bisesa. The child 
was so troubled that she did the household work evilly, 
and was beaten by Durga Charan’s wife in consequence. 

A week later, Bisesa taxed Trejago with the flirtation. 
She understood no gradations and spoke oponly. Trejago 
laughed and Bisesa stamped her little feet—little feet, 



l6o BEYOND THE PALE. 

light as marigold flowers, that could lie in the palm of a 
man’s one hand. 

Much that is written about “Oriental passion and im¬ 
pulsiveness ” is exaggerated and compiled at second-hand, 
but a little of it is true ; and when an Englishman finds 
that little, it is quite as startling as any passion in his own 
proper life. Bisesa, raged and stormed, and finally threat¬ 
ened to kill herself if Trejago did not at once drop the 
alien Memsahih who had come between them. Trejago 
tried to explain, and to show her that she did not under¬ 
stand these things from a Western standpoint. Bisesa 
drew herself up, and said simply : 

“I do not. I know only this—it is not good that I 
should have made you dearer than my own heart to me, 
Sahib. You are an Englishman. I am only a black 
girl—” she was fairer than bar-gold in the Mint, — “ and 
the widow of a black man.” 

Then she sobbed and said: '‘But on my soul and 
my Mother’s soul, I love you. There shall no harm 
come to you, whatever happens to me. 

Trejago argued with the child, and tried to soothe 
her, but she seemed quite unreasonably disturbed. Noth¬ 
ing would satisfy her save that all relations between 
them should end. He was to go away at once. And 
he went. As he dropped out at the window, she kissed 
his forehead twice, and he walked home wondering. 

A week, and then three weeks, passed without a sign 
from Bisesa. Trejago, thinking that the rupture had 
lasted quite long enough, went down to Amir Nath’s 
Gully for the fifth time in the three weeks, hoping that 
his rap at the sill of the shifting grating would be 
answered. He was not disappointed. 

There was a young moon, and one stream of light fell 
down into Amir Nath’s Gully, and struck the grating 


BEYOND THE BALE. 


l6l 

which was drawn away as he knocked. From the black 
dark, Bisesa held out her arms into the moonlight 
Both hands had been cut off at the wrists, and the 
stumps were nearly healed. 

Then, as Bisesa bowed her head between her arms and 
sobbed, some one in the room grunted like a wild beast, 
and something sharp,—knife, sword or spear,—thrust at 
Trejago in his boorka. The stroke missed his body, but 
cut into one of the muscles of the groin, and he limped 
slightly from the wound for the rest of his days. 

The grating went into its place. There was no sign 
whatever from inside the house,—nothing but the 
moonlight strip on the high wall, and the blackness of 
Amir Nath’s Gully behind. 

The next thing Trejago remembers, after raging and 
shouting like a madman between those pitiless walls, 
is that he found himself near the river as the dawn 
was breaking, threw away his boorka and went home 
bareheaded. 


What the tragedy was—whether Bisesa had, in a fit 
of causeless despair, told everything, or the intrigue had 
been discovered and she tortured to tell ; whether 
Durga Charan knew his name and what became of 
Bisesa—Trejago does not know to this day. Some¬ 
thing horrible had happened, and the thought of what 
it must have been, comes upon Trejago in the night 
now and again, and keeps him company till the morn¬ 
ing. One special feature of the case is that he does 
not know where lies the front of Durga Charan’s house. 
It may open on to a courtyard comiAon to two or more 
houses, or it may lie behind any one of the gates of 
Jitha Megji’s bustee. Trejago cannot tell. He cannot 
get Bisesa—poor little Bisesa—back again. He has lost 



62 


BEYOND THE PALE, 


her in the City where each man’s house is as guarded 
and as unknowable as the grave; and the grating that 
opens into Amir Nath’s Gully has been walled up. 

But Trejago pays his calls regularly, and is reckoned 
a very decent sort of man. 

There is nothing peculiar about him, except a slight 
stiffness, caused by a riding-strain, in the right leg. 


IN ERROR, 


163 


IN ERROR. 

They burnt a corpse upon the sand— 

The light shone out afar; 

It guided home the plunging boats 
That beat from Zanzibar. 

Spirit of Fire, where e’er Thy altars rise. 

Thou art Light of Guidance to our eyes ! 

Salsette Boat-Song. 

There is hope for a man who gets publicly and riot¬ 
ously drunk more often than he ought to do ; but there 
is no hope for the man who drinks secretly and alone 
in his own house—the man who is never seen to drink. 

This is a rule ; so there must be an exception to prove 
it. Moriarty’s case was that exception. 

He was a Civil Engineer, and the Government, very 
kindly, put him quite by himself in an out-district, with 
nobody but natives to talk to and a great deal of work 
to do. He did his work well in the four years he was 
utterly alone ; but he picked up the vice of secret and 
solitary drinking, and came up out of the wilderness 
more old and worn and haggard than the dead-alive 
life had any right to make him. You know the saying 
that a man who has been alone in the jungle for more 
than a year is never quite sane all his life after. People 
credited Moriarty’s queerness of manner and moody 
ways to the solitude, and said that if showed how Gov¬ 
ernment spoilt the futures of its best men. Moriarty had 
built himself the plinth of a very good reputation in the 
bridge-dam-girder line. But he knew, every night of the 


i 64 


IN ERROR. 


fhc week, that he was taking steps to undermine that 
reputation with L. L. L. and “Christopher” and little 
nips of liqueurs, and filth of that kind. He had a sound 
constitution and a great brain, or else he would have 
broken down and died like a sick camel in the district, 
as better men have done before him. 

Government ordered him to Simla after he had come 
out of the desert; and he went up meaning to try for 
a post then vacant. That season, Mrs. Reiver—perhaps 
you will remember her—was in the height of her power, 
and many men lay under her yoke. Everything bad 
that could be said has already been said about Mrs. 
Reiver, in another tale. Moriarty was heavily-built and 
handsome, very quiet and nervously anxious to please 
his neighbors when he wasn’t sunk in a brown study. 
He started a good deal at sudden noises or if spoken to 
without warning ; and, when you watched him drinking 
his glass of water at dinner, you could see the hand shake 
a little. But all this was put down to nervousness, and 
the quiet, steady, “ sip-sip-sip, fill and sip-sip-sip, again,” 
that went on in his own room when he was by himself, 
was never known. Which was miraculous, seeing how 
everything in a man’s private life is public property out 
here. 

Moriarty was drawn, not into Mrs. Reiver’s set, be¬ 
cause they were not his sort, but into the power of Mrs. 
Reiver, and he fell down in front of her and made a god¬ 
dess of her. This was due to his coming fresh out of the 
jungle to a big town. He could not scale things properly 
or see who was what. 

Because Mrs. Reiver was cold and hard, he said she 
was stately and dignified. Because she had no brains, 
and could not talk cleverly, he said she was reserved and 
shy. Mrs. Reiver shy ! Because she was unworthy of 


IN ERROR. 


165 

honor or reverence from any one, he reverenced her from 
a distance and dowered her with all the virtues in the 
Bible and most of those in Shakespeare. 

This big, dark, abstracted man who was so nervous 
when a pony cantered behind him, used to moon in the 
train of Mrs. Reiver, blushing with pleasure when she 
threw a word or two his way. His admiration was 
strictly platonic : even other women saw and admitted 
this. He did not move out in Simla, so he heard nothing 
against his idol ; which was satisfactory. Mrs. Reiver 
took no special notice of him, beyond seeing that he was 
added to her list of admirers, and going for a walk with 
him now and then, just to show that he was her property, 
claimable as such. Moriarty must have done most of 
the talking, for Mrs. Reiver couldn't talk much to a man 
of his stamp ; and the little she said could not have been 
profitable. What Moriarty believed in, as he had good 
reason to, was Mrs. Reiver's influence over him, and, in 
that belief, set himself seriously to try to do away with 
the vice that only he himself knew of. 

His experiences while he was fighting with it must have 
been peculiar, but he never described them. Sometimes 
he would hold off from everything except water for a 
week. Then, on a rainy night, when no one had asked 
him out to dinner, and there wms a big fire in his room, 
and everything comfortable, he would sit down and make 
a big night of it by adding little nip to little nip, planning 
big schemes of reformation meanwhile, until he threw 
himself on his bed hopelessly drunk. He suffered next 
morning. 

One night, the big crash came. He was troubled in 
his own mind over his attempts to make himself “worthy 
of the friendship" of Mrs. Reiver. The past ten days 
had been very bad ones, and the end of it all was 


i66 


IN ERROR. 


that he received the arrears of two and three quar¬ 
ter years of sipping in one attack of delirium tremens 
of the subdued kind ; beginning with suicided depres¬ 
sion, going on to fits and starts and hysteria, and end¬ 
ing with downright raving. As he sat in a chair in 
front of the fire, or walked up and down the room pick¬ 
ing a handkerchief to pieces, you heard what poor 
Moriarty really thought of Mrs. Reiver, for he raved 
about her and his own fall for the most part ; though 
he ravelled some P. W. D. accounts into the same skein 
of thought. He talked and talked, and talked in a low 
dry whisper to himself, and there was no stopping him. 
He seemed to know that there was something wrong, 
and twice tried to pull himself together and confer 
rationally with the Doctor ; but his mind ran out of 
control at once, and he 'fell back to a whisper and the 
story of his troubles. It is terrible to hear a big man 
babbling like a child of all that a man usually locks up, 
and puts away in the deep of his heart. Moriarty read 
out his very soul for the benefit of any one who was in 
the room between ten-thirty that night and two-forty-five 
next morning. 

From what he said, one gathered how immense an in¬ 
fluence Mrs. Reiver held over him, and how thoroughly 
he felt for his own lapse. His whisperings cannot, of 
course, be put down here ; but they were very instructive 
as showing the errors of his estimates. 

When the trouble was over, and his few acquaintances 
were pitying him for the bad attack of jungle-fever that 
had so pulled him down, Moriarty swore a big oath to 
liimsclf and went abroad again with Mrs. Reiver till the 
end of the season, adoring her in a quiet and deferential 
way as an angel from heaven. Later on he took to riding 


IN ERROR. 


167 

—not hacking but honest riding—which was good proof 
that he was improving, and you could slam doors behind 
him without his jumping to his feet with a gasp. That, 
again, was hopeful. 

How he kept his oath, and what it cost him in the 
beginning nobody knows. He certainly managed to 
compass the hardest thing that a man who has drunk 
heavily can do. He took his peg and wine at dinner ; 
but he never drank alone, and never let what he drank 
have the least hold on him. 

Once he told a bosom-friend the story of his great 
trouble, and how the “influence of a pure honest woman, 
and an angel as well ” had saved him. When the man 
—startled at anything good being laid to Mrs. Reiver’s 
door—laughed, it cost him Moriarty’s friendship. Mo- 
riarity who is married now to a woman ten thousand 
times better than Mrs. Reiver—a woman who believes 
that there is no man on earth as good and clever as her 
husband—will go down to his grave vowing and protest¬ 
ing that Mrs. Reiver saved him from ruin in both 
worlds. 

That she knew anything of Moriarity’s weakness 
nobody believed for a moment. That she would have 
cut him dead, thrown him over, and acquainted all her 
friends with her discovery, if she had known of it, nobody 
who knew her doubted for an instant. 

Moriarity thought her something she never was, and 
in that belief saved himself. Which was just as good as 
though she had been everything that he had imagined. 

But the question is, what claim will Mrs. Reiver have 
to the credit of Moriarity’s salvation, when her day of 
reckoning comes? 


i 68 


A BANK FRAUD, 


A BANK FRAUD. 

He drank strong waters and his speech was coarse ; 

He purchased raiment and forebore to pay; 

He struck a trusting junior with a horse, 

And won Gymkhanas in a doubtful way. 

Then, ’twixt a vice and folly, turned aside 

To do good deeds and straight to cloak them, lied. 

The Mess Room. 

If Reggie Burke were in India now, he would resent 
this tale being told ; but as he is in Hongkong and won’t 
see it, the telling is safe. He was the man who worked 
the big fraud on the Sind and Sialkote Bank. He was 
manager of an up-country Branch, and a sound practical 
man with a large experience of native loan and insurance 
work. He could combine the frivolities of ordinary life 
with his work, and yet do well. Reggie Burke rode 
anything that would let him get up, danced as neatly as 
he rode, and was wanted for every sort of amusement in 
the Station. 

As he said himself, and as many men found out rather 
to their surprise, there were two Burkes, both very much 
at your service. “ Reggie Burke,” between four and ten, 
ready for anything from a hot-weather gymkhana to a 
riding-picnic ; and, between ten and four, “ Mr. Reginald 
Burke, Manager of the Sind and Sialkote Branch Bank.” 
You might play polo with him one afternoon and hear 
him express his opinions when a man crossed : and you 
might call on him next morning to raise a two-thousand 
rupee loan on a five hundred pound insurance-policy. 



A BANK FRAUD. 


169 

eighty pounds paid in premiums. He would recognize 
you, but you would have some trouble in recognizing 
him. . 

The Directors of the Bank—it had its head-quarters in 
Calcutta and its General Manager’s word carried weight 
with the Government—picked their men well. They had 
tested Reggie up to a fairly severe breaking-strain. They 
trusted him just as much as Directors ever trust Managers. 
You must see for yourself whether their trust was mis¬ 
placed. 

Reggie’s Branch was in a big Station, and worked 
with the usual staff—one Manager, one Accountant, both 
English, a Cashier, and a horde of native clerks ; besides 
the Police patrol at nights outside. The bulk of its work, 
for it was in a thriving district, was lioondi and accom¬ 
modation of all kinds. A fool has no grip of this sort ot 
business ; and a clever man who does not go about 
among his clients, and know more than a little of their 
affairs, is worse than a fool. Reggie was young looking, 
clean-shaved, with a twinkle in his eye, and a head that 
nothing short of a gallon of the Gunners’ Madeira could 
make any impression on. 

One day, at a big dinner, he announced casually that 
the Directors had shifted on to him a Natural Curiosity, 
from England, in the Accountant line. He was per¬ 
fectly correct. Mr. Silas Riley, Accountant, was a 
most curious animal—a- long, gawky, rawboned York- 
shireman, full of the savage self-conceit that blossoms 
only in the best county in England. Arrogance was a 
mild word for the mental attitude of Mr. S. Riley. He 
had worked himself up, after seven years, to a Cashier’s 
position in a Huddersfield Bank ; and all his experience 
lay among the factories of the North. Perhaps he would 
have done better on the Bombay side, where they are 


170 


A BANK FRAUD. 


happy with one-half percent, profits, and money is cheap, 
He was useless for Upper India and a wheat Province, 
where a man wants a large head and a touch of imagina¬ 
tion if he is to turn out a satisfactory balance-sheet. 

He was wonderfully narrow-minded in business, and, 
being new to the country, had no notion that Indian 
banking is totally distinct from Home work. Like most 
clever self-made men, he had much simplicity in his 
nature ; and, somehow or other, had construed the ordi¬ 
narily polite terms of his letter of engagement into a belief 
that the Directors had chosen him on account of his 
special and brilliant talents, and that they set great store 
by him. This notion grew and crystallized ; thus adding 
to his natural North-country conceit. Further, he was 
delicate, suffered from some trouble in his chest, and was 
short in his temper. 

You will admit that Reggie had reason to call his-new 
Accountant a Natural Curiosity. The two men failed to 
hit it off at all. Riley considered Reggie a wild, feather- 
headed idiot, given to Heaven only knew what dissipa¬ 
tion in low places called “ Messes, ’’ and totally unfit for the 
serious and solemn vocation of banking. He could never 
get over Reggie’s look of youth and “you-be-damned 
air; and he couldn’t understand Reggie’s friends—clean- 
built, careless men in the Army—who rode over to big 
Sunday breakfasts at the Bank, and told sultry stories 
till Riley got up and left the room. Riley was always 
showing Reggie how the business ought to be conducted, 
and Reggie had more than once to remind him that seven 
years’ limited experience between Huddersfield and Bev¬ 
erly did not qualify a man to steer a big up-country busi- 
naes. Then Riley sulked, and referred to himself as a 
pillar of the Bank and a cherished friend of the Directors, 
and Reggie tore his hair. If a man’s English subordinates 


A BAN-JC FJ^ A UD. 


171 

fail him in this country, he comes to a hard time indeed, 
for native help has strict limitations. In the winter Riley 
went sick for weeks at a time with his lung complaint, 
and this threw more work on Reggie. But he preferred it 
to the everlasting friction when Riley was well. 

One of the Travelling Inspectors of the Bank dis¬ 
covered these collapses and reported them to the Direc¬ 
tors. Now Riley had been foisted on the Bank by an 
M. P., who wanted the support of Riley's father, who, 
again, was anxious to get his son out to a warmer climate 
because of those lungs. The M. P. had interest in the 
Bank; but one of the Directors wanted to advance a 
nominee of his own ; and, after Riley’s father had died, 
he made the rest of the Board see that an Accountant 
who was sick for half the year, had better give place to 
a healthy man. If Riley had known the real story of his 
appointment, he might have behaved better ; but, know¬ 
ing nothing, his stretches of sickness alternated with rest¬ 
less, persistent, meddling irritation of Reggie, and all the 
hundred ways in which conceit in a subordinate situation 
can find play. Reggie used to call him striking and hair¬ 
curling names behind his back as a relief to his own feel¬ 
ings ; but he never abused him to his face, because he 
said ;—“ Riley is such a frail beast that half of his loath¬ 
some conceit is due to pains in the chest.” 

Late one April, Riled went very sick indeed. The doc¬ 
tor punched him and thumped him, and told him he 
would be better before long. Then the doctor went to 
Reggie and said :—“Do you know how sick your Ac¬ 
countant is?” “No!” said Reggie—“The worse the 
better, confound him I He's a clacking nuisance when 
he's well. I'll let you take away the Bank Safe if you 
can drug him silent for this hot-weather.” 

But the doctor did not laugh—“ Man, I’m not joking," 


172 


A BANJC FRAUD. 


he said. give him another three months in his bed 

and a week or so more to die in. On my honor and repu¬ 
tation that’s all the grace he has in this world. Consump¬ 
tion has hold of him to the marrow.” 

Reggie’s face changed at once into the face of “Mr. 
Reginald Burke,” and he answered :—“What can I do } ” 
“Nothing,” said the doctor. “For all practical purposes 
the man is dead already. Keep him quiet and cheerful 
and tell him he’s going to recover. That’s all. I’ll look 
after him to the end, of course. ” 

The doctor went away, and Reggie sat down to open 
the evening mail. His first letter was one from the Di¬ 
rectors, intimating for his information that Mr. Riley was 
to resign, under a month’s notice, by the terms of his 
agreement, telling Reggie that their letter to Riley would 
follow and advising Reggie of the coming of a new Ac¬ 
countant, a man whom Reggie knew and liked. 

Reggie lit a cheroot, and, before he had finished smok¬ 
ing, he had sketched the outline of a fraud. He put away 
—“burked”—the Directors’ letter, and went in to talk to 
Riley who was as ungracious as usual, and fretting him¬ 
self over the way the Bank would run during his illness. 
He never thought of the extra work on Reggie’s shoulders, 
but solely of the damage to his own prospects of advance¬ 
ment. Then Reggie assured him that everything would 
be well, and that he, Reggie, would confer with Riley 
daily on the management of the Bank. Riley was a little 
soothed, but he hinted in as many words that he did not 
think much of Reggie's business capacity. Reggie was 
humble. And he had letters in his desk from the Direc¬ 
tors that a Gilbarte or a Hardie might have been proud of! 

The days passed in the big darkened house, and the 
Directors’ letter of dismissal to Riley came and was put 
away by Reggie who, every evening, brought the books 


A BANJfT FRAt/D, 


to Riley s room, and showed him what had been going 
forward, while Riley snarled. Reggie did his best to 
make statements pleasing to Riley, but the Accountant 
was sure that the Bank was going to rack and ruin 
without him. In June, as the lying in bed told on his 
spirit, he asked whether his absence had been noted by 
the Directors and Reggie said that they had written 
most sympathetic letters, hoping that he would be able 
to resume his valuable services before long. He showed 
Riley the letters; and Riley said that the Directors ought 
to have written to him direct. A few days later, Reggie 
opened Riley’s mail in the half-light of the room, and 
gave him the sheet—not the envelope—of a letter to Riley 
from the Directors. Riley said he would thank Reggie 
not to interfere with his private papers, specially as 
Reggie knew he was too weak to open his own letters. 
Reggie apologized. 

Then Riley’s mood changed, and he lectured Reggie on 
his evil ways: his horses and his bad friends. “Of 
course lying here, on my back, Mr. Burke, I can’t keep 
you straight; but when I’m well, I do hope you’ll pay 
some heed to my words.” Reggie, who had dropped 
polo, and dinners, and tennis, and all to attend to Riley, 
said that he was penitent and settled Riley’s head on the 
pillow and heard him fret and contradict in hard, dry, 
hacking whispers, without a sign of impatience. This at 
the end of a heavy day’s office work, doing double duty, 
in the latter half of June. 

When the new Accountant came, Reggie told him the 
facts of the case, and announced to Riley that he had 
a guest staying with him. Riley said that he might 
have had more consideration than to entertain his 
“doubtful friends” at such a time. Reggie made Car- 
ron, the new Accountant, sleep at the Club in conse- 


174 


A BANK= FRAUD. 


querice. Carron’s arrival took some of the heavy work 
off his shoulders, and he had time to attend to Riley’s 
exactions—to explain, soothe, invent, and settle and re¬ 
settle the poor wretch in hed, and to forge complimentary 
letters from Calcutta. At the end of the first month, Riley 
wished to send some money home to his mother. Reg¬ 
gie sent the draft. At the end of the second month, 
Riley’s salary came in just the same. Reggie paid it out 
of his own pocket; and, with it, wrote Riley a beautiful 
letter from the Directors. 

Riley was very ill indeed, but the flame of his life burnt 
unsteadily. Now and then he would be cheerful and 
confident about the future, sketching plans for going 
Home and seeing his mother. Reggie listened patiently 
when the office-work was over, and encouraged him. 

At other times, Riley insisted on Reggie reading the 
Bible and grim “ Methody ” tracts to him. Out of these 
tracts he pointed morals directed- at his Manager. But 
he always found time to worry Reggie about the work¬ 
ing of the Bank, and to show him where the weak points 
lay. 

This in-door, sick-room life and constant strains wore 
Reggie down a good deal, and shook his nerves, and low¬ 
ered his billiard-play by forty points. But the business 
of the Bank, and the business of the sick-room, had to go 
on, though the glass was in the shade. 

At the end of the third month, Riley was sinking fast, 
and had begun to realize that he was very sick. But the 
conceit that made him worry Reggie, kept him from be¬ 
lieving the worst. “ He wants some sort of mental stim¬ 
ulant if he is to drag on,” said the doctor. “ Keep him 
interested in life if you care about his living.” So Riley, 
contrary to all the laws of business and the finance, re¬ 
ceived a 25-per-cent, rise of salary from the Directors. 


A BANK FRAUD. 


175 

The mental stimulant" succeeded beautifully. Riley 
was happy and cheerful, and, as is often the case in con¬ 
sumption, healthiest in mind when the body was weak¬ 
est. He lingered for a full month, snarling and fretting 
about the Bank, talking of the future, hearing the Bible 
read, lecturing Reggie on sin, and wondering when he 
would be able to move abroad. ' 

But at the end of September, one mercilessly hot even¬ 
ing, he rose up in his bed with a little gasp, and said 
quickly to Reggie :—“ Mr. Burke, I am going to die. I 
know it in myself. My chest is all hollow inside, and 
there's nothing to breathe with. To the best of my knowl¬ 
edge I have done nowt,"—he was returning to the talk 
of his boyhood—“ to lie heavy on my conscience. God 
be thanked, I have been preserved from the grosser 
forms of sin; and I counsel Mr. Burke. . . 

Here his voice died down, and Reggie stooped over 
him. 

“Send my salary for September to my Mother. .... 
done great things with the Bank if I had been spared 
. . . . mistaken policy .... no fault of mine. . .” 

Then he turned his face to the wall and died. 

Reggie drew the sheet over Its face, and went out into 
the verandah, with his last “ mental stimulant"—a letter 
of condolence and sympathy from the Directors—unused 
in his pocket. 

“If I’d been only ten minutes earlier, " thought Reg¬ 
gie, “ I might have heartened him up to pull through an¬ 
other day." 



175 


7vns^ amendment. 


, TODS’ AMENDMENT. 

The World hath set its heavy yoke 
Upon the old white-bearded folk 
Who strive to please the King. 

God’s mercy is upon the young, 

God’s wisdom in the baby tongue 
That fears not anything. 

The Parable of Chajju Bhagat. 

Now Tods' Mamma was a singularly charming woman, 
and every one in Simla knew Tods. Most men had 
saved him from death on occasions. He was beyond 
his ayah's control altogether, and perilled his life daily to 
find out what would happen if you pulled a Mountain 
Battery mule’s tail. He was an utterly fearless young 
Pagan, about six years old, and the only baby who ever 
broke the holy calm of the Supreme Legislative Council. 

It happened this way : Tods’ pet kid got loose, and 
fled up the hill, off the Boileaugunge Road, Tods after 
it, until it burst into the Viceregal Lodge lawn, then 
attached to “ Peterhoff,” The Council were sitting at 
the time, and the windows were open because it was 
warm. The Red Lancer in the porch told Tods to go 
away ; but Tods knew the Red Lancer and most of the 
Members of Council personally. Moreover, he had 
firm hold of the kid’s collar, and was being dragged all 
across the flower-beds. ‘‘ Give my to the long 

Councillor Sahib, and ask him to help me take Moti 
back ! ” gasped Tods. The Council heard the noise 
through the open windows ; and, after an interval, was 


TOD^ AMENDMENT. 


177 

seen the shocking spectacle of a Legal Member and a 
Lieutenant-Governor helping, under the direct patronage 
of a Commander-in-Chief and a Viceroy, one small and 
very dirty boy in a sailor’s suit and a tangle of brown 
hair, to coerce a lively and rebellious kid. They headed 
it off down the path to the Mall, and Tods went home in 
triumph and told his Mamma that all the Councillor 
Sahibs had been helping him to catch Moll. Whereat his 
Mamma smacked Tods for interfering with the adminis¬ 
tration of the Empire ; but Tods met the Legal Member 
the next day, and told him in confidence that if the Legal 
Member ever wanted to catch a goat, he. Tods, would give 
him all the help in his power. “Thank you. Tods,” said 
the Legal Member. 

Tods was the idol of some eighty jhampanis, and half 
as many saises. He saluted them all as “O Brother.” 
It never entered his head that any living human being 
could disobey his orders ; and he was the buffer between 
the servants and his Mamma’s wrath. The working of 
that household turned on Tods, who was adored by every 
one from the dhohy to the dog-boy. Even Futteh Khan, 
the villainous loafer khit from Mussoorie, shirked risking 
Tods’ displeasure for fear his co-mates should look down 
on him. 

So Tods had honor in the land from Boileaugunge to 
Chota Simla, and ruled justly according to his lights. Of 
course, he spoke Urdu, but he had also mastered many 
queer side-speeches like the chotee bolee of the women, 
and held grave converse with shopkeepers and Hill-coolies 
alike. He was precocious for his age, and his mixing 
with natives had taught him some of the more bitter truths 
of life ; the meanness and the sordidness of it. He used, 
over his bread and milk, to deliver solemn and serious 
aphorisms, translated from the vernacular into the English, 

12 


TODS* AMENDMENT. 


178 

that made his Mamma jump and vow that Tods musf go 
home next hot weather. 

Just when Tods was in the bloom of his power, the 
Supreme Legislature were hacking out a Bill, for the Sub- 
Montane Tracts, a revision of the then Act, smaller than 
the Punjab Land Bill but affecting a few hundred thousand 
people none the less. The Legal Member had built, and 
bolstered, and embroidered, and amended that Bill, till it 
looked beautiful on paper. Then the Council began to 
settle what they called the “ minor details.” As if any 
Englishman legislating for natives knows enough to know 
which are the minor and which are the major points, from 
the native point of view, of any measure ! That Bill was 
a triumph of “safe guarding the interests of the tenant.” 
One clause provided that land should not be leased on 
longer terms than five years at a stretch ; because, if the 
landlord had a tenant bound down for, say, twenty years, 
he would squeeze the very life out of him. The notion was 
to keep up a stream of independent cultivators in the Sub- 
Montane Tracts ; and ethnologically and politically the 
notion was correct. The only drawback was that it was 
altogether wrong. A native’s life in India implies the 
life of his son. Wherefore, you cannot legislate for one 
generation at a time. You must consider the next from 
the native point of view. Curiously enough, the native 
now and then, and in Northern India more particularly, 
hates being over-protected against himself. There was 
a Naga village once, where they lived on dead a7tdh\xx\Q6. 
Commissariat mules .... But that is another story. 

For many reasons, to be explained later, the people 
concerned objected to the Bill. The Native Member in 
Council knew as much about Punjabis as he knew about 
Charing Cross. He had said in Calcutta that “the Bill 
was entirely in accord with the desires of that large and 


Tons^ AMENDMENT. 


179 

important class, the cultivators ”; and so on, and so on. 
The Legal Member's knowledge of natives was limited to 
English-speaking Durbaris, and his own red chaprassis, the 
Sub-Montane Tracts concerned no one in particular, the 
Deputy Commissioners were a good deal too driven to 
make representations, and the measure was one which 
dealt with small landholders only. Nevertheless, the 
Legal Member prayed that it might be correct, for he was 
a nervously conscientious man. He did not know that 
no man can tell what natives think unless he mixes with 
them with the varnish off. And not always then. But 
he did the best he knew. And the measure came up to 
the Supreme Council for the final touches, while Tods 
patrolled the Burra Simla Bazar in his morning rides, and 
played with the monkey belonging to Ditta Mull, the 
hunnia, and listened, as a child listens, to all the stray 
talk about this new freak of the Lat Sahib's. 

One day there 'was a dinner-party, at the house of 
Tods' Mamma, and the Legal Member came. Tods was 
in bed, but he kept awake till he heard the bursts of 
laughter from the men over the coffee. Then he paddled 
out in his little red flannel dressing-gown and his night- 
suit and took refuge by the side of his father, knowing 
that he would not be sent back. “See the miseries of 
having a family ! " said Tods' father, giving Tods three 
prunes, some water in a glass that had been used for 
claret, and telling him to sit still. Tods sucked the 
prunes slowly, knowing that he would have to go when 
they were finished, and sipped the pink water like a man 
of the world, as he listened to the conversation. Pres¬ 
ently, the Legal Member, talking “ shop ” to the Head 
of a Department, mentioned his Bill by its full name— 
“ The Sub Montane Tracts Ryotwary Revised Enactment" 


Tons' A MANDATE NT. 


i8o 

Tods caught the one native word and lifting up his small 
voice said :— 

Oh, I know all about that! Has it been murramutted 
yet, Councillor Sahib.” 

“ How much? ” said the Legal Member. 

“ Murramutted —mended.—Put theek^ you know—made 
nice to please Ditta Mull! ” 

The Legal Member left his place and moved up next to 
Tods. 

“ What do you know about Ryotwari, little man?’* he 
said. 

“ Pm not a little man, Tm Tods, and I know all about it. 
Ditta Mull, and Choga Lall, and Amir Nath, and—oh, 
lakhs of my friends tell me about it in the bazars when I 
talk to them.’* 

“Oh, they do—do they? What do they say. Tods ? *' 

Tods tucked his feet under his red flannel dressing- 
gown and said :—“ I must Jink.” 

The Legal Member waited patiently. Then Tods, with 
infinite compassion : 

“You don’t speak my talk, do you. Councillor Sahib P ’* 

“No ; I am sorry to say I do not,’* said the Legal 
Member. 

“ Very well,” said Tods,** “ I must fink in English.** 

He spent a minute putting his ideas in order, and 
began very slowly, translating in his mind from the 
vernacular to English, as many Anglo-Indian children 
do. You must remember that the Legal Member help¬ 
ed him on by questions when he halted, for Tods was 
not equal to the sustained flight of oratory that follows. 

“ Ditta Mull says ‘This thing is the talk of a child, 
and was made up by fools.’ But /don’t think you are 
a fool, Councillor Sahibf said Tods hastily. “You 
caught my goat. This is what Ditta Mull says ^ am 





TODS'' AMENDMENT. 


l8l 

not a fool, and why should the Sirkar say I am a child ? 
I can see if the land is good and if the landlord is good. 
If I am a fool, the sin is upon my own head. For five 
years I take my ground for which I have saved money, 
and a wife I take too, and a little son is born.’ Ditta 
Mull has one daughter now, but he says he will have a 
son, soon. And he says : ‘ At the end of five years, by 

this new bmidobusi, I must go. If I do not go, I must 
get fresh seals and /^z^^ws-stamps on the papers, perhaps 
in the middle of the harvest, and to go to the law courts 
once is wisdom, but to go twice is Jehannum.' That is 
quite true,” explained Tods gravely. “All my friends say 
so. And Ditta Mull says :—‘Always fresh takkus and 
paying money to vakils and chaprassis and law-courts 
every five years, or else the landlord makes me go. Why 
do I want to go I Am I a fool I If I am a fool and do 
not know, after forty years, good land when I see it, let 
me die ! But if the new bundobusi says for fifteen years, 
that it is good and wise. My little son is a man, and I 
am burnt, and he takes the ground or another ground, 
paying only once for the /iZ/^^«s-stampson the papers, and 
his little son is born, and at the end of fifteen years is a 
man too. But what profit is there in five years and fresh 
papers ? Nothing but dikh, trouble, dikh. We are not 
young men who take these lands, but old ones—not jats, 
but tradesmen with a little money—and for fifteen years 
we shall have peace. Nor are we children that the Sirkar 
should treat us so.’ ” 

Here Tods stopped short, for the whole table were 
listening. The Legal Member said to Tods : “Is that 
all .? ” 

“All lean remember,” said Tods. “But you should 
see Ditta Mull’s big monkey. It’s just like n Councillor 
KSahibf 


82 


TODS^ AMENDMENT, 


^^Tods ! Go to bed,” said his father. 

Tods gathered up his dressing-gown tail and departed. 

The Legal Member brought his hand down on the 
table with a crash—By Jove ! ” said the Legal Member, 
“I believe the boy is right The short tenure is the weak 
point ” 

He left early, thinking over what Tods had said. Now, 
it was obviously impossible for the Legal Member to play 
with dihunnias monkey, by way of getting understanding ; 
but he did better. He made inquiries, always bearing in 
mind the fact that the real native—not the hybrid. Uni¬ 
versity-trained mule—is as timid as a colt, and, little by 
little, he coaxed some of the men whom the measure con¬ 
cerned most intimately to give in their views, which 
squared very closely with Tod’s evidence. 

So the Bill was amended in that clause; and the Legal 
Member was filled with an uneasy suspicion that Native 
Members represent very little except the Orders they carry 
on their bosoms. But he put the thought from him as 
illiberal. He was a most Liberal man. 

After a time, the news spread through the bazars that 
Tods had got the Bill recast in the tenure-clause, and if 
Tods’ Mamma had not interfered, Tods would have made 
himself sick on the baskets of fruit and pistachio nuts and 
Cabuli grapes and almonds that crowded the verandah. 
Till he went Home, Tods ranked some few degrees before 
the Viceroy in popular estimation. But for the little life of 
him Tods could not understand why. 

In the Legal Member’s private-paper-box still lies the 
rough draft of the Sub-Montane Tracts Ryotwary Revised 
Enactment; and, opposite the twenty-second clause, 
pencilled in blue chalk, and signed by the Legal Member, 
are the word Tods' AinendmentT 


THE DAUGHTER OF THE REGIMENT 


183 


THE DAUGHTER OF THE REGIMENT. 

Jain ’Ardin’ was a Sarjint’s wife, 

A Sarjint’s wife wus she. 

She married of ’im in Orldershort 
An’ corned acrost the sea. 

(Chorus) ’Ave you never ’eard tell o’Jain ’Ardin’ ? 

Jain ’Ardin’ ? 

Jain ’Ardin’ ? 

’Ave you never ’eard tell o’ Jain ’Ardin’ ? 

The pride o’ the Compant’^’ ? 

Old Barrack-Room Ballad. 

“ A GENTLEMAN who doesii’t kiiow the Circassian Circle 
ought not to stand up for it—puttin’ everybody out.” That 
was what Miss McKenna said, and the Sergeant who was 
my vis-a-vis looked the same thing. I was afraid of Miss 
McKenna. She was six feet high, all yellow freckles and 
red hair, and was simply clad in white satin shoes, a pink 
muslin dress, an apple-green stuff sash, and black silk 
gloves, with yellow roses in her hair. Wherefore I fled 
from Miss McKenna and sought my friend Private Mul- 
vaney who was at the cant—refreshment-table. 

“So you’ve been dancin’with little Jhansi McKenna, 
Sorr—she that’s goin’ to marry Corp’ril Slane? Whin you 
next conversh wid your lorruds an’ your ladies, tell thim 
you’ve danced wid little Jhansi. ’Tis a thing to be proud 
av. ” 

But 1 wasn’t proud. 1 was humble. I saw a story 
in Private Mulvaney’s eye; and, besides, if he stayed too 
long at the bar, he would, I knew, qualify for more pack- 


184 


THE DAUGHTER OF THE REGIMENT. 


drill. Now to meet an esteemed friend doing- pack-drill 
outside the guard-room, is embarrassing, especially if you 
happen to be walking with his Commanding Officer. 

“ Come on to the parade-ground, Mulvaney, it’s cooler 
there, and tell me about Miss McKenna. What is she, 
and who is she, and why is she called ‘Jhansi 

“ D’ye mane to say you’ve never heard av Ould Pum- 
meloe’s daughter? An’you thinkin’ you know things! 
I’m wid ye in a minut’ whin me poipe’s lit.” 

We came out under the stars. Mulvaney sat down on 
one of the artillery bridges, and began in the usual way : 
his pipe between his teeth, his big hands clasped and 
dropped between his knees, and his cap well on the back 
of his head : 

‘‘Whin Mrs. Mulvaney, that is, was Miss Shad that was, 
you were a dale younger than you are now, an’ the 
Army was dif’rint in sev’ril e-senshuls. Bhoys have no 
call for to marry now-a-days, an’ that’s why the Army 
has so few rale, good, honust, swearin’, strapagin’, tin¬ 
der-hearted, heavy-futted wives as ut used to hav whin h 
was a Corp’ril. I was rejuced afterwards—but no mather 
—I was a Corp’ril wanst. In thim times, a man lived 
died wid his rigimint; an’ by natur’, he married whin he 
was a man. Whin I was Corp’ril—Mother av Hivin, how 
the rigimint has died an’ been borrun since that day 1—■ 
my Color-Sar’jint was Ould McKenna, an’ a married 
man tu. An’ his woife—his first woife, for he married 
three times did McKenna—was Bridget McKenna, from 
Portarlington, likemesilf. I’ve misremembered fwhat her 
first name was; but in B Comp’ny we called her ‘Ould 
Pummeloe ’ by reason av her figure, which was entirely 
cir-cum-fe-renshil. Like the big dhrum ! Now that 
woman—God rock her sowl to rest in glory I—was for 
eyerlastin’ havin’ childher ; an’ McKenna, whin the fifth 


THE DAUGHTER OF THE REGIMENT. 


185 

or sixth come squallin' on to the musther-roll, swore he 
wud number them off in future. ButOuld Pummeloeshe 
prayed av him to christen thim after the names of the sta¬ 
tions they was borrun in. So there was Colaba McKenna, 
an’ Muttra McKenna, an' a whole Presidincy av other Mc¬ 
Kennas, an’ little Jhansi, dancin’ over yonder. Whin 
the children wasn’t hornin’, they was dying ; for, av our 
childer die like sheep in these days, they died like flies 
thin. I lost me own little Shad—but no matther. 'Tis 
long ago, and Mrs. Mulvaney niver had another. 

“ I’m digresshin. Wan divil’s hot summer, there come 
an order from some mad ijjit, whose name I misre- 
member, for the rigimint to go up-country. May be they 
wanted to know how the new rail carried throops. They 
knew ! On me sowl, they knew before they was done ! 
Ould Pummeloehad jiist buried Muttra McKenna ; an’ the 
season bein’onwholesim, only little Jhansi McKenna, who 
was four year ould thin, was left on hand. 

“ Five children gone in fourteen months. 'Twas harrd, 
wasn’t ut } 

“ So we wint up to our new station in that blazin’ heat 
—may the curse av Saint Lawrence conshume the 
man who gave the ordher ! Will I ivir forget that move .? 
They gave us two wake thrains to the rigimint; an’ we 
was eight hundher’ and sivinty strong. There was 
A. B. C. an’ D. Companies in the secon’ thrain, wid 
twelve women, no orficers’ ladies, an’ thirteen childher. 
We was to go six hundher’ miles, an’ railways was new 
in thim days. Whin we had been a night in the belly 
av the thrain—the men ragin’ in their shirts an’ dhrink- 
in’ anything they cud find, an’ eatin’ bad fruit-stuff whin 
they cud, for we cudn’t stop ’em—I was a Corp’ril thin— 
the cholera bruk out wid the dawnin’ av the day. 

“ Pray to the Saints, you may niver see cholera in a 


i86 


THE DAUGHTER OF THE REGIMENT 


throop-thrain ! Tis like the judgmint av God hittin* 
down from the nakid sky ! We run into a rest-camp—as 
lit might have been Ludianny, but not by any means so 
comfortable. The Orficer Commandin’ sent a telegrapt 
up the line, three hundher’ mile up, askin’for help. FaHh, 
we wanted ut, for ivry sowl av the followers ran for the 
dear life as soon as the thrain stopped; an’ by the time 
that telegrapt was writ, there wasn’t a naygur in the sta¬ 
tion exceptin’ the telegrapt-clerk—an’ he only bekaze he 
was held down to his chair by the scruff av his sneakin’ 
black neck. Thin the day began wid the noise in the 
carr’ges, an’ the rattle av the men on the platform 
failin’ over, arms an’ all, as they stud for to answer the 
Comp’ny muster-roll before goin’ over to the camp. 
Tisn’t for me to say what like the cholera was like. 
Maybe the Doctor cud ha’ tould, av he hadn’t dropped 
on to the platform from the door av a carriage where 
we was takin’ out the dead. He died wid the rest, 
Some bhoys had died in the night. We tuk out siven, 
and twenty more was sickenin’ as we tuk thim. The 
women was huddled up any ways, screamin’ wid fear. 

“ Sez the Commandin’ Orficer whose name I misre- 
member :—‘ Take the women over to that tope av trees 
yonder. Get thim out av the camp. ’Tis no place for 
thim.’ 

“ Ould Pummeloe was sittin' on her beddin’-rowl, 
thryin’ to kape little Jhansi quiet. ‘ Go off to that tope !’ 
sez the Orficer. ‘ Go out av the men’s way ! ’ 

“ ‘Be damned av I do ! ’ sez Ould Pummeloe, an’ little 
Jhansi, squattin’ by her mother’s side, squeaks out :— 
‘ Be damned av I do,’ tu. Thin Ould Pummeloe turns to 
the women an' she sez ;—‘ Are ye goin’ to let the bhoys 
die while you’re picnickin’, ye sluts.? ’ sez she. ‘ ’Tis 
wather they want. Come on an’ help.’ 


TH^ DAUGHTER OF THE REGIMENT, 


187 

“Wid that, she turns up her sleeves an’ steps out for 
a well behind the rest-camp—little Jhansi trottin’ behind 
wid a lotah an’ string, an’ the other women followin’ 
like lambs, wid horse-buckets and cookin’ degchies. 
Whin all the things was full, Ould Pummeloe marches 
back into camp—’twas like a battlefield wid all the glory 
missin’—at the hid av the rigimint av women. 

“McKenna, me man!’ she sez, wid a voice on her 
like grand-roun’s challenge ‘ tell the bhoys to be quiet. 
Ould Pummeloe’s acomin’ to look afther thim—wid free 
dhrinks. ’ 

“ Thin we cheered, and the cheerin’ in the lines was 
louder than the noise av the poor divils wid the sickness 
on thim. But not much. 

“You see, we was a new an’ raw rigimint in those 
days, an^ we cud make neither head nor tail av the 
sickness; an’ so we was useless. The men was goin’ 
roun' an’ about like dumb sheep, waitin’ for the nex’ man 
to fall over, an’ say in’ undher their spache:—‘Fwhat is 
ui? In the name av God, /what is ut.?’ ’Twas horrible. 
But through ut all, up an’ down, an’ down an’ up, wint 
Ould Pummeloe an’ little Jhansi—all we cud see av the 
baby, undher a dead man’s helmet wid the chin-strap 
swingin’ about her little stummick—up an’ down wid the 
wather and fwhat brandy there was. 

“Now an’ thin, Ould Pummeloe, the tears runnin’down 
her fat, red face, sez :—‘ Me bhoys, me poor, dead darlin’, 
bhoys ! ’ But, for the most, she was thryin’ to put heart 
into the men an’ kape thim stiddy; and little Jhansi was 
tellin’ thim all they wud be ‘ betther in the mornin*.’ 
’Twas a thrick she’d picked up from hearing Ould Pum¬ 
meloe whin Muttra was burnin’ out wid fever. In the 
momin’ I ’Twas the iverlastin’ mornin’ at St. Peter’s Gate 
was the mornin’ for seven an' twenty good men; an’ 


88 


THE DAUGHTER OF THE REGIMENT. 


twenty more was sick to the death in that bitter, burnin’ 
sun. But the women worked like angils, as Fve said, an’ 
the men like divils, till two doctors come down from 
above, an’ we was rescued. 

“But, just before that, Ould Pummeloe, on her knees 
over a bhoy in my squad—right-cot man to me he was in 
the barrick — tellin’ him the worrud av the Church that 
niver failed a man yet, sez :—‘ Hould me up, bhoys ! I’m 
feelin’ bloody sick ! ’ ’Twas the sun, not the cholera, did 
ut. She misremembered she was only wearin’ her ould 
black bonnet, an’ she died wid ‘McKenna, me man,’ 
houldin’ her up, an’ the bhoys howled whin they buried 
her. 

“That night, a big wind blew, an’ blew, an’ blew, an’ 
blew the tents flat. But it blew the cholera away an’ 
niver another case there was all the while we was waitin’ 
—ten days in quarintin’. Av you will belave me, the 
thrack of the sickness in the camp was for all the worruld 
the thrack of a man walkin’ four times in a figur-av-eight 
through the tents. They say ’tis the Wandherin’ Jew 
takes the cholera wid him. I believe ut. 

“An’ that” said Mulvaney, illogically, “is the cause 
why little Jhansi McKenna is fwhat she is. She was 
brought up by the Quarter-Master Sergeant’s wife whin 
McKenna died, but she b’longs to B. Comp’ny ; an’ this 
tale I’m tellin’ you— wid a proper appreciashin av Jhansi 
McKenna—I’ve belted into every recruity av the Comp’ny 
as he was drafted. Faith, ’twas me belted Corp’ril Slane 
into askin’ the girl! ” 

“Not really.? ” 

“Man, I did! She’s no beauty to look at, but she’s 
Ould Pummeloe’s daughter, an’ ’tis my juty to provide 
for her. Just before Slane got his wan-eight a day, I 
sez to him :—‘Slane,’ sez I, ‘ to-morrow ’twill be insiibor- 


THE DAUGHTER OF THE REGIMENT 1S9 

dinashin av me to chastise you ; but, by the sowl av 
Ould Pummeloe, who is now in glory, av you don't give 
me your worrud to ask Jhansi McKenna at wanst. I’ll 
peel the flesh off yer bones wid a brass huk to-night. 
'Tis a dishgrace to B. Comp’ny she’s been single so 
long !' sez L Was I goin' to let a three-year-ould pre- 
shume to discoorse wid me ; my will bein’ set } No ! 
Slane wint an’ asked her. He’s a good bhoy is Slane. 
Wan av these days he’ll get into the Com’ssariat an dhrive 

a boggy wid his-savin’s. So I provided for Ould 

Pummeloe’s daughter ; an’ now you go along an’ dance 
agin wid her.” 

And I did. 

I felt a respect for Miss Jhansi McKenna ; and I went 
to her wedding later on. 

Perhaps I will tell you about that one of these days. 


IN THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH. 


190 


IN THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH. 

“ Stopped in the straight when the race was his own I 
Look at him cutting it—cur to the bone! ” 

“ Ask, ere the youngster be rated and chidden, 

What did he carry and how was he ridden ? 

Maybe they used him too much at the start; 

Maybe Fate’s weight-cloths are breaking his heart.** 

Life’s Handicap. 

When I was telling* you of the joke that The Worm 
played off on the Senior Subaltern, I promised a some¬ 
what similar tale, but with all the jest left out. This is 
that tale. 

Dicky Hatt was kidnapped in his early, early youth— 
neither by landlady’s daughter, housemaid, barmaid, nor 
cook, but by a girl so nearly of his own caste that only a 
woman could have said she was just the least little bit in 
the world below it This happened a month before he 
came out to India, and five days after his one-and- 
twentieth birthday. The girl Was nineteen—six years 
older than Dicky in the things of this world, that is to say 
—and, for the time, twice as foolish as he. 

Excepting, always, falling off a horse there is nothing 
more fatally easy than marriage before the Registrar. 
The ceremony costs less than fifty shillings, and is re¬ 
markably like walking into a pawn-shop. After the 
declarations of residence have been put in, four minutes 
will cover the rest of the proceedings—fees, attestation, 
and all. Then the Registrar slides the blotting-pad over 
the names, and says grimly with his pen between his 
teeth :—“ Now you’re man and wife ; ” and the couple 


IN THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH 


191 

walk out into the street, feeling as if something were hor¬ 
ribly illegal somewhere. 

But that ceremony holds and can drag a man to his 
undoing just as thoroughly as the “ long as ye both 
shall live ” curse from the altar-rails, with the brides¬ 
maids giggling behind, and “ The Voice that breathed der 
Eden lifting the roof off. In this manner was Dicky 
Hatt kidnapped, and he considered it vastly fine, for he 
had received an appointment in India which carried a 
magnificent salary from the Home point of view. The 
marriage was to be kept secret for a year. Then Mrs. 
Dicky Hatt was to come out and the rest of life was to 
be a glorious golden mist. That was how they sketched 
it under the Addison Road Station lamps ; and, after 
one short month, came Gravesend and Dicky steaming 
out to his new life, and the girl crying in a thirty-shil¬ 
lings a week bed-and-living-room, in a back-street off 
Montpelier Square near the Knightsbridge Barracks. 

But the country that Dicky came to was a hard land 
where “ men of twenty-one were reckoned very small 
boys indeed, and life was expensive. The salary that 
loomed so large six thousand miles away did not go far. 
Particularly when Dicky divided it by two, and remitted 
more than the fair half, at 1-6, to Montpelier Square. 
One hundred and thirty-five rupees out of three hundred 
and thirty is not much to live on ; but it was absurd to 
suppose that Mrs. Hatt could exist forever on the £20 
held back by Dicky from his outfit allowance. Dicky 
saw this and remitted at once ; always remembering that 
Rs. 700 were to be paid, twelve months later, for a first- 
class passage out for a lady. When you add to these 
trifling details the natural instincts of a boy beginning a 
new life in a new country and longing to go about and 
enjoy himself, and the necessity for grappling with strange 


m THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH. 


192 

work—which, properly speaking, should take up a boy’s 
undivided attention—you will see that Dicky started hand¬ 
icapped. He saw it himself for a breath or two ; but he 
did not guess the full beauty of his future. 

As the hot weather began, the shackles settled on him 
and ate into his flesh. First would come letters—big, 
crossed, seven-sheet letters—from his wife, telling him 
how she longed to see him, and what a Heaven upon 
earth would be their property when they met. Then 
some boy of the chummery wherein Dicky lodged would 
pound on the door of his bare little room, and tell him 
to come out to look at a pony—the very thing to suit 
him. Dicky could not afford ponies. He had to ex¬ 
plain this. Dicky could not afford living in the chum¬ 
mery, modest as it was. He had to explain this before 
he moved to a single room next the office where he 
worked all day. He kept house on a green oil-cloth 
table-cover, one chair, one charpoy, one photograph, one 
tooth-glass, very strong and thick, a seven-rupee eight- 
anna filter, and messing by contract at thirty-seven ru¬ 
pees a month. Which last item was extortion. He 
had no punkah, for a punkah costs fifteen rupees a 
month ; but he slept on the roof of the office with all his 
wife’s letters under his pillow. Now and again he was 
asked out to dinner where he got both a punkah and an 
iced drink. But this was seldom, for people objected to 
recognizing a boy who had evidently the instincts of a 
Scotch tallow-chandler, and who lived in such a nasty 
fashion. Dicky could not subscribe to any amusement, 
so he found no amusement except the pleasure of turn¬ 
ing over his Bank-book and reading what it said about 
“ loans on approved security.” That cost nothing. He 
remitted through a Bombay Bank, by the way, and the 
Station knew nothing of his private affairs. 


IN THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH 


Every month he sent Home all he could possibly spare 
for his wife-and for another reason which was ex¬ 

pected to explain itself shortly and would require more 
money. 

About this time, Dicky was overtaken with the nervous, 
haunting fear that besets married men when they are 
out of sorts. He had no pension to look to. What if he 
should die suddenly, and leave his wife unprovided for .? 
The thought used to lay hold of him in the still, hot 
nights on the roof, till the shaking of his heart made 
him think that he was going to die then and there of 
heart-disease. Now this is a frame of mind which no 
boy has a right to know. It is a strong man s trouble ; 
but, coming when it did, it nearly drove poor punkah¬ 
less, perspiring Dicky Hatt mad. He could tell no one 
about it. 

A certain amount of “screw” is as necessary for a 
man as for a billiard-ball. It makes them both do won¬ 
derful things. Dicky needed money badly, and he 
worked for it like a horse. But, naturally, the men who 
owned him knew that a boy can live very comfortably 
on a certain income—pay in India is a matter of age 
not merit, you see, and, if their particular boy wished to 
work like two boys. Business forbid that they should stop 
him ! But Business forbid that they should give him an 
increase of pay at his present ridiculously immature age ! 
So Dicky won certain rises of salary—ample for a boy— 
not enough for a wife and a child—certainly too little for 
the seven-hundred-rupee passage that he and Mrs. Hatt 
had discussed so lightly once upon a time. And with 
this he was forced to be content. 

Somehow, all his money seemed to fade away in 
Home drafts and the crushing Exchange, and the tone 
of the Home letters changed and grew querulous. 

13 



194 


IN THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH 


“Why wouldn’t Dicky have his wife and the baby out ? 
Surely he had a salary—a fine salary—and it was too 
bad of him to enjoy himself in India. But would he— 
could he—make the next draft a little more elastic } ” 
Here followed a list of baby’s kit, as long as a Parsee’s 
bill. Then Dicky, whose heart yearned to his wife and 
the little son he had never seen—which, again, is a feel¬ 
ing no boy is entitled to—enlarged the draft and wrote 
queer half-boy, half-man letters, saying that life was not 
so enjoyable after all and would the little wife wait yet a 
little longer.? But the little wife, however much she 
approved of money, objected to waiting, and there was 
a strange, hard sort of ring in her letters that Dicky didn’t 
understand. How could he, poor boy.? 

Later on still—just as Dicky had been told— a propos 
of another youngster who had “made a fool of himself” 
as the saying is—that matrimony would not only ruin his 
further chances of advancement, but would lose him his 
present appointment—came the news that the baby, his 
own little, little son, had died and, behind this, forty 
lines of an angry woman’s scrawl, saying the death might 
have been averted if certain things, all costing money, 
had been done, or if the mother and the baby had been 
with Dicky. The letter struck at Dicky’s naked heart ; 
but, not being officially entitled to a baby, he could show 
no sign of trouble. 

How Dicky won through the next four months, and 
what hope he kept alight to force him into his work, no 
one dare say. He pounded on, the seven-hundred-rupee 
passage as far away as ever, and his style of living un¬ 
changed, except when he launched into a new filter. 
There was the strain of his office-work, and the strain of 
his remittances, and the knowledge of his boy’s death, 
which touched the boy more, perhaps, than it would have 


IN THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH. 


195 

touched a man ; and, beyond all, the enduring strain of 
his daily life. Gray-headed seniors who approved of his 
thrift and his fashion of denying himself everything 
pleasant, reminded him of the old saw that says :— 

“ If a youth would be distinguished in his art, art, art, 

“ He must keep the girls away from his heart, heart, heart. 

And Dicky, who fancied he had been through every 
trouble that a man is permitted to know, had to laugh 
and agree ; with the last line of his balanced Bank book 
jingling in his head day and night. 

But he had one more sorrow to digest before the end. 
There arrived a letter from the little wife—the natural 
sequence of the others if Dicky had only known it—and 
the burden of that letter was “gone with a handsomer 
man than you.” It was a rather curious production, 
without stops, something like this :—“ She was not going 
to wait forever and the baby was dead and Dicky was 
only a boy and he would never set eyes on her again and 
why hadn’t he waved his handkerchief to her when he 
left Gravesend and God was her judge she was a wicked 
woman but Dicky was worse enjoying himself in India 
and this other man loved the ground she trod on and 
would Dicky ever forgive her for she would never forgive 
Dicky ; and there was no address to write to.” 

Instead of thanking his stars that he was free, Dicky 
discovered exactly how an injured husband feels—again, 
not at all the knowledge to which a boy is entitled—for 
his mind went back to his wife as he remembered her in 
the thirty-shilling “suite” in Montpelier Square, when 
the dawn of his last morning in England was breaking, 
and she was crying in the bed. Whereat he rolled about 
on his bed and bit his fingers. He never stopped to think 
whether, if he had met Mrs. Hatt after those two years, 
he would have discovered that he and she had grown 


IN THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH. 


196 

quite different and new persons. This, theoretically, ha 
ought to have done. He spent the night after the Eng¬ 
lish Mail came in rather severe pain. 

Next morning, Dicky Hatt felt disinclined to work. 
He argued that he had missed the pleasure of youth. 
He was tired, and he had tasted all the sorrow in life 
before three and twenty. His Honor was gone—that 
was the man ; and now he, too, would go to the Devil—• 
that was the boy in him. So he put his head down on 
the green oil-cloth table-cover, and wept before resigning 
his post, and all it offered. 

But the reward of his services came. He was given 
three days to reconsider himself, and the Head of the 
establishment, after some telegraphings, said that it was 
a most unusual step, but, in view of the ability that Mr. 
Hatt had displayed at such and such a time, at such and 
such junctures, he was in a position to offer him an infi¬ 
nitely superior post—first on probation, and later, in the 
natural course of things, on confirmation. “And how 
much does the post carry? ” said Dicky. “ Six hundred 
and fifty rupees,” said the Head slowly, expecting to see 
the young man sink with gratitude and joy. 

And it came then ! The seven hundred rupee passage, 
and enough to have saved the wife, and the little son, 
and to have allowed of assured and open marriage, came 
then. Dicky burst into a roar of laughter—laughter he 
could not check—nasty, jangling merriment that seemed 
as if it would go on forever. When he had recovered 
himself he said, quite seriously:—“I’m tired of work. 
I’m an old man now. It’s about time I retired. And I 
will.” 

“ The boy’s mad ! ” said the Head. 

I think he was right; but Dicky Hatt never reappeared 
to settle the question. 


PIG, 


197 


PIG. 

Go, stalk the red deer o’er the heather 
Ride, follow the fox if you can ! 

But, for pleasure and profit together. 

Allow me the hunting of Man,— 

The chase of the Human, the search for the Soul 
To its ruin,—the him ting of Man. 

The Old Shikarri. 

I BELIEVE the difference began in the matter of a horse, 
with a twist in his temper, whom Pinecoffin sold to Naffer- 
ton and by whom Nafferton was nearly slain. There 
may have been other causes of offence; the horse was 
the official stalking-horse. Nafferton was very angry; 
but Pinecoffin laughed and said that he had never 
guaranteed the beast’s manners. Nafferton laughed, 
too, though he vowed that he would write off his fall 
against Pinecoffin if he waited five years. Now, a 
Dalesman from beyond Skipton will forgive an injury 
when the Strid lets a man live ; but a South Devon man 
is as soft as a Dartmoor bog. You can see from their 
names that Nafferton had the race-advantage of Pine¬ 
coffin. He was a peculiar man, and his notions of 
humor were cruel. He taught me a new and fascinat¬ 
ing form of shikar. He hounded Pinecoffin from 
Mithankot to Jagadri, and from Gurgaon to Abbottabad 
—up and across the Punjab, a large Province and in 
places remarkably dry. He said that he had no intention 
of allowing Assistant Commissioners to ‘^sell him pups,” 


PIG, 


198 

in the shape of ramping, screaming countrybreds, with¬ 
out making their lives a burden to them. 

Most Assistant Commissioners develop a bent for some 
special work after their first hot weather in the country. 
The boys with digestions hope to write their names large 
on the Frontier, and struggle for dreary places like Bannu 
and Kohat. The bilious ones climb into the Secretariat. 
Which is very bad for the liver. Others are bitten with a 
mania for District work, Ghuznivide coins or Persian 
poetry; while some, who come of farmers’ stock, find 
that the smell of the Earth after the Rains gets into their 
blood, and calls them to “develop the resources of the 
Province.” These men are enthusiasts. Pinecoffin be¬ 
longed to their class. He knew a great many facts bear¬ 
ing on the cost of bullocks and temporary wells, and 
opium-scrapers, and what happens if you burn too much 
rubbish on a field, in the hope of enriching used-up soil. 
All the Pinecoffins come of a landholding breed, and so 
the land only took back her own again. Unfortunately 
—most unfortunately for Pinecoffin—he was a Civilian, as 
well as a farmer. Nafferton watched him. and thought 
about the horse. Nafferton said:—-‘-See me chase that 
boy till he drops!” I said:—“You can’t get your knife 
into an Assistant Commissioner.” Nafferton told me that 
I did not understand the administration of the Province. 

Our Government is rather peculiar. It gushes on the 
agricultural and general information side, and will supply 
a moderately respectable man with all sorts of “econo¬ 
mic statistics,” if he speaks to it prettily. For instance, 
you are interested in gold-washing in the sands of the 
Sutlej. You pull the string, and find that it wakes up half 
a dozen Departments, and finally communicates, say, with 
a friend of yours in the Telegraph, who once wrote some 
notes on the customs of the gold-washers when he was 


PIG. 


199 


on construction-work in their part of the Empire. He 
may or may not be pleased at being ordered to write out 
everything he knows for your benefit. This depends on 
his temperament. The bigger man you are, the more 
information and the greater trouble can you raise. 

Nafferton was not a big man ; but he* had the reputa¬ 
tion of being very “earnest.” An “earnest” man can 
do much with a Government. There was an earnest 
man once who nearly wrecked. . . but all India 

knows that sXoxY. I am not sure what real “earnest¬ 
ness ” is. A very fair imitation can be manufactured by 
neglecting to dress decently, by mooning about in a 
dreamy, misty sort of way, by taking 'ofhce-work home 
after staying in office till seven, and by receiving crowds 
of native gentleman on Sundays. That is one sort of 
“ earnestness.” 

Nafferton cast about for a peg whereon to hang his 
earnestness, and for a string that would communicate 
with Pinecoffin. He found both. They were Pig. 
Nafferton became an earnest inquirer after Pig. He 
informed the Government that he had a scheme whereby 
a very large percentage of the British Army in India 
could be fed, at a very large saving, on Pig. Then he 
hinted that Pinecoffin might supply him with the “varied 
information necessary to the proper inception of the 
scheme.” So the Government wrote on the back of the 
letter :—“Instruct Mr. Pinecoffin to furnish Mr. Nafferton 
with any information in his power.” Government is very 
prone to writing things on the backs of letters which, 
later, kad to trouble and confusion. 

Nafferton had not the faintest interest in Pig, but he 
knew that Pinecoffin would flounce into the trap. Pine- 
coffin was delighted at being consulted about Pig. The 
Indian Pig is nort exactly an important factor in agri- 


200 


PIG, 


cultural life; but Nafferton explained to Pinecoffin that 
there was room for improvement, and corresponded 
direct with that young man. 

You may think that there is not much to be evolved 
from Pig. It all depends how you set to work. Pine- 
coffin being a Civilian and wishing to do things thoroughly, 
began with an essay on the Primitive Pig, the Mythology 
of the Pig, and the Dravidian Pig. Nafferton filed that 
information—twenty-seven foolscap sheets—and wanted 
to know about the distribution of the Pig in the Punjab, 
and how it stood the Plains in the hot weather. From 
this point onwards, remember that I am giving you only 
the barest outlines of the affair—the guy-ropes, as it were, 
of the web that Nafferton spun round Pinecoffin. 

Pinecoffin made a colored Pig-population map, and col¬ 
lected observations on the comparative longevity of Pig 
(^z) in the sub-montane tracts of the Himalayas, and (d) in 
the Rechna Doab. Nafferton filed that, and asked what 
sort of people looked after Pig. This started an ethno¬ 
logical excursus on swineherds, and drew from Pinecoffin 
long tables showing the proportion per thousand of the 
caste in the Derajat. Nafferton filed that bundle, and ex¬ 
plained that the figures which he wanted referred to the 
Cis-Sutlej states, where he understood that Pigs were very 
fine and large, and where he proposed to start a Piggery. 
By this time. Government had quite forgotten their in¬ 
structions to Mr. Pinecoffin. They were like the gentle¬ 
men, in Keats poem, who turned well-oiled wheels to 
skin other people. But Pinecoffin was just entering into 
the spirit of the Pig-hunt, as Nafferton well knew he 
would do. He had a fair amount of work of his own to 
clear away; but he sat up of nights reducing Pig to five 
places of decimals for the honor of his Service. He was 
not going to appear ignorant of so easy a subject as Pig. 


PIG. 


201 


Then Government sent him On special duty to Kohat, 
to “inquire into" the big, seven-foot, iron-shod spades of 
that District People had been killing each other with 
those peaceful tools; and Government wished to know 
“ whether a modified form of agricultural implement 
could not, tentatively and as a temporary measure, be 
introduced among the agricultural population without 
needlessly or unduly exacerbating the existing religious 
sentiments of the peasantry." 

Between those spades and Nafferton's Pig, Pinecoffin 
was rather heavily burdened. 

Natferton now began to take up “ The food-supply 
of the indigenous Pig, with a view to the improvement 
of its capacities as a flesh-former. {V) The acclimatiza¬ 
tion of the exotic Pig, maintaining its distinctive peculi¬ 
arities." Pinecoffin replied exhaustively that the exotic 
Pig would become merged in the indigenous type ; and 
quoted horse-breeding statistics to prove this. The side- 
issue was debated, at great length on Pinecoffin’s side, 
till Nafferton owned that he had been in the wrong, and 
moved the previous question. When Pinecoffin had 
quite written himself out about flesh-formers, and fibrins, 
and glucose and the nitrogenous constituents of maize 
and lucerne, Nafferton raised the question of expense. 
By this time Pinecoffin, who had been transferred from 
Kohat, had developed a Pig theory of his own, which 
he stated in thirty-three folio pages—all carefully filed 
by Nafferton. Who asked for more. • 

These things took ten months, and Pinecoffin’s interest 
in the potential Piggery seemed to die down after he 
had stated his own views. But Nafferton bombard¬ 
ed him with letters on “ the Imperial aspect of the 
scheme, as tending to officialize the sale of pork, and 
thereby calculated to give offence to the Mahomedan 


202 


PIG, 


population of Upper India.” He guessed that Pine- 
coffin would want some broad, free-hand work after his 
niggling, stippling, decimal details. Pinecoffin handled 
the latest development of the case in masterly style, and 
proved that no “ popular ebullition of excitement was to 
be apprehended. ’’ Nafferton said that there was nothing 
like Civilian insight in matters of this kind, and lured him 
up a bye-path—“the possible profits to accrue to the 
Government from the sale of hog-bristles.” There is an 
extensive literature of hog-bristles, and the shoe, brush, 
and colormans trades recognize more varieties of bristles 
than you would think possible. After Pinecoffin had 
wondered a little at Nafferton’s rage for information, he 
sent back a monograph, fifty-one pages, on “Products 
of the Pig.” This led him, under Nafferton’s tender hand¬ 
ling, straight to the Cawnpore factories, the trade in hog- 
skin for saddles—and thence to the tanners. Pinecoffin 
wrote that pomegranate-seed was the best cure for hog- 
skin, and suggested—for the past fourteen months had 
wearied him—that Nafferton should “ raise his pigs before 
he tanned them.” 

Nafferton went back to the second section of his fifth 
question. How could the exotic Pig be brought to give 
as much pork as it did in the West and yet “ assume the 
essentially hirsute characteristics of its oriental conge¬ 
ner ? Pinecoffin felt dazed, for he had forgotten what 
he had written sixteen months before, and fancied that 
he was q,bout to reopen the entire question. He was 
too far involved in the hideous tangle to retreat, and, in 
a weak moment, he wrote :—“Consult my first letter." 
Which related to the Dravidian Pig. As a matter of fact, 
Pinecoffin had still to reach the acclimatization stage ; 
having gone off on a side-issue on the merging of types. 

Then Nafferton really unmasked his batteries ! He 


PIG. 


203 

complained to the Government, in stately language, of 
“the paucity of help accorded to me in my earnest at¬ 
tempts to start a potentially remunerative industry, and 
the flippancy with which my requests for information 
are treated by’ a gentleman whose pseudo-scholarly at¬ 
tainments should at least have taught him the primary 
differences between the Dravidian and the Berkshire 
variety of the genus Sus. If I am to understand that the 
letter to which he refers me contains his serious views 
on the acclimatization of a valuable, though possibly 
uncleanly, animal, I am reluctantly compelled to be¬ 
lieve/’ &c., &c. 

There was a new man at the head of the Department 
of Castigation. The wretched Pinecoffin was told that 
the Service was made for the Country, and not the Coun¬ 
try for the Service, and that he had better begin to supply 
information about Pigs. 

Pinecoffin answered insanely that he had written 
everything that could be written about Pig, and that 
some furlough was due to him. 

Nafferton got a copy of that letter, and sent it, with the 
essay on the Dravidian Pig, to a down-country paper 
which printed both in full. The essay was rather high- 
flown ; but if the Editor had seen the stacks of paper, in 
Pinecoffin’s handwriting, on Nafferton’s table, he would 
not have been so sarcastic about the “nebulous discur¬ 
siveness and blatant self-sufficiency of the modern Com- 
^eiiiion-wallah, and his utter inability to grasp the practi¬ 
cal issues of a practical question.” Many friends cut out 
these remarks and sent them to Pinecoffin. 

I have already stated that Pinecoffin came of a soft 
stock. This last stroke frightened and shook him. He 
could not understand it; but he felt that he had been, 
somehow, shamelessly betrayed by Nafferton. He real- 


204 


PIG. 


ized that he had wrapped himself up in the Pigskin with¬ 
out need, and that he could not well set himself right 
with his Government. All his acquaintances asked after 
his “nebulous discursiveness” or his “blatant self-suffi¬ 
ciency,” and this made him miserable. 

He took a train and went to Nafferton whom he had 
not seen since the Pig business began. He also took the 
cutting from the paper, and blustered feebly and called 
Nafferton names, and then died down to a watery, weak 
protest of the “ I-say-it’s-too-bad-you-know” order. 

Nafferton was very sympathetic. 

“Pm afraid Pve given you a good deal of trouble, 
haven’t I ? ” said he. 

“Trouble!” whimpered Pinecoffin ; I don’t mind the 
trouble so much, though that was bad enough ; but what 
I resent is this showing up in print. It will stick to me 
like a burr all through my service. And I did do my 
best for your interminable swine. It’s too bad of you, on 
my soul it is } ” 

“ I don’t know,” said Nafferton ; “Have you ever been 
stuck with a horse It isn’t the money I mind, though 
that is bad enough; but what I resent is the chaff that 
follows, especially from the boy who stuck me. But I 
think we’ll cry quits now.” 

Pinecoffin found nothing to say save bad words; and 
Nafferton smiled ever so sweetly, and asked him to 
dinner. 


THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS. 


205 


THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS. 

It was not in the open fight 
We threw away the sword, 

But in the lonely watching 
In the darkness by the ford. 

The waters lapped, the night-wind blew, 

Full-armed the Fear was born and grew. 

And we were flying ere we knew 
From panic in the night. 

Beoni Bar. 

Some people hold that an English Cavalry regiment 
cannot run. This is a mistake. I have seen four hun¬ 
dred and thirty-seven sabres flying over the face of the 
country in abject terror—have seen the best Regiment 
that ever drew bridle, wiped off the Army List for the 
space of two hours. If you repeat this tale to the White 
Hussars they will, in all probability, treat you severely. 
They are not proud of the incident. 

You may know the White Hussars by their “side’* 
which is greater than that of all the Cavalry Regiments 
on the roster. If this is not a sufficient mark, you may 
know them by their old brandy. It has been sixty years 
in the Mess and is worth going far to taste. Ask for the 
“ McGaire” old brandy, and see that you get it. If the 
Mess Sergeant thinks that you are uneducated, and that 
the genuine article will be lost on you, he will treat you 
accordingly. He is a good man. But, when you are at 
Mess, you must never talk to your hosts about forced 
marches or long-distance rides. The Mess are very sen- 


206 


THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS. 


sitive ; and, if they think that you are laughing at them, 
will tell you so. 

As the White Hussars say, it was all the Colonehs fault 
He was anew man, and he ought never to have taken the 
Command. He said that the Regiment 'was not smart 
enough. This to the White Hussars, who knew" they 
could walk round any Horse and through any Guns, and 
over any Foot on the face of the earth! That insult was 
the first cause of offence. 

Then the Colonel cast the Drum-Horse—the Drum- 
Horse of the White Hussars ! Perhaps you do not see 
what an unspeakable crime he had committed. I will 
try to make it clear. The soul of the Regiment lives 
in the Drum-Horse who carries the silver kettle-drums. 
He is nearly always a big piebald Waler. That is a 
point of honor ; and a Regiment will spend anything 
you please on a piebald. He is beyond the ordinary 
laws of casting. His w’ork is very light, and he only 
manoeuvres at a foot-pace. Wherefore, so long as he 
can step out and look handsome, his w^ell-being is as¬ 
sured. He knows more about the Regiment than the 
Adjutant, and could not make a mistake if he tried. 

The Drum-Horse of the White Hussars was only 
eighteen years old, and perfectly equal to his duties. He 
had at least six years’ more work in him, and carried 
himself with all the pomp and dignity of a Drum-Major 
of the Guards. The Regiment had paid Rs. 1,200 for 
him. 

But the Colonel said that he must go, and he was cast 
in due form and replaced by a washy, bay beast, as 
ugly as a mule, with a ewe-neck, rat-tail, and cow^-hocks. 
The Drummer detested that animal, and the best of 
the Band-horses put back their ears and showed the 
whites of their eyes at the very sight of him. They 


THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS. 


207 

knew him for an upstart and no gentleman. I fancy 
that the Colonel’s ideas of smartness extended to the 
Band, and that he wanted to make it take part in 
the regular parade movements. A Cavalry Band is a 
sacred thing. It only turns out for Commanding Officers’ 
parades, and the Band Master is one degree more 
important than the Colonel. He is a High Priest and 
the Keel Row"' is his holy song. The Keel Row” 
is the Cavalry Trot; and the man who has never heard 
that tune rising, high and shrill, above the rattle of the 
Regiment going past the saluting-base, has something 
yet to hear and understand. 

When the Colonel cast the Drum-Horse of the White 
Hussars, there was nearly a mutiny. 

The officers were angry, the Regiment were furious, 
and the Bandsmen swore—like troopers. The Drum- 
Horse was going to be put up to auction—public auction 
—to be bought, perhaps, by a Parsee and put into a 
cart! It was worse than exposing the inner life of the 
Regiment to the whole world, or selling the Mess Plate 
to a Jew—a black Jew. 

The Colonel was a mean man and a bully. He knew 
what the Regiment thought about his action ; and, 
when the troopers offered to buy the Drum-Horse, he 
said that their offer was mutinous and forbidden by the 
Regulations. 

But one of the Subalterns—Hogan-Yale, an Irishman 
—bought the Drum-Horse for Rs. 160 at the sale; and 
the Colonel was wroth. Yale professed repentance— 
^e was unnaturally submissive—and said that, as he 
had only made the purchase to save the horse from 
possible ill-treatment and starvation, he would now 
shoot him and end the business. This appealed to 
soothe the Colonel, for he wanted the Drum-Hors^ 


2o8 the rout of the white hussars. 

disposed of. He felt that he had made a mistake, and 
could not of course acknowledge it. Meantime, the 
presence of the Drum-Horse was an annoyance to him. 

Yale took to himself a glass of the old brandy, three 
cheroots, and his friend, Martyn ; and they all left the 
Mess together. Yale and Martyn conferred for two 
hours in Yale’s quarters ; but only the bull-terrier who 
keeps watch over Yale’s boot-trees knows what they 
said. A horse, hooded and sheeted to his ears, left 
Yale’s stables and was taken, very unwillingly, into the 
Civil Lines. Yale’s groom went with him. Two men 
broke into the Regimental Theatre and took several 
paint-pots and some large scenery brushes. Then night 
fell over the Cantonments, and there was a noise as of 
a horse kicking his loose-box to pieces in Yale’s stables. 
Yale had a big, old, white Waler trap-horse. 

The next day was a Thursday, and the men, hearing 
that Yale was going to shoot the Drum-Horse in the 
evening, determined to give the beast a regular regi¬ 
mental funeral—a finer one than they would have given 
the Colonel had he died just then. They got a bullock- 
cart and some sacking, and mounds and mounds of 
roses, and the body, under sacking, was carried out to 
the place where the anthrax cases were cremated; two- 
thirds of the Regiment following. There was no Band, 
but they all sang “ The Place where the old Horse died"' 
as something respectful and appropriate to the occasion. 
When the corpse was dumped into the grave and the men 
began throwing down armfuls of roses to cover it, the 
Farrier-Sergeant ripped out an oath and said aloud :—: 
‘‘ Why, it aint the Drum-Horse any more than it’s me ! ” 
The Troop-Sergeant-Majors asked him whether he had left 
his head in the Canteen. The Farrier-Sergeant said that he 
knew the Drum-Horse’s feet as well as he knew his own ; 


s 

THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS. 209 

but he was silenced when he saw the regimental number 
burnt in on the poor stiff, upturned near-fore. 

Thus was the Drum-Horse of the White Hussars buried ; 
the Farrier-Sergeant grumbling. The sacking that cover¬ 
ed the corpse was smeared in places with black paint; 
and the Farrier-Sergeant drew attention to this fact. But 
the Troop-Sergeant-Major of E Troop kicked him severely 
on the shin, and told him that he was undoubtedly drunk. 

On the Monday following the burial, the Colonel sought 
revenge on the White Hussars. Unfortunately, being at 
that time temporarily in Command of the Station, he or¬ 
dered a Brigade field-day. He said that he wished to 
make the regiment sweat for their damned insolence,” 
and he carried out his notion thoroughly. That Monday 
was one of the hardest days in the memory of the White 
Hussars. They were thrown against a skeleton-enemy, 
and pushed forward, and withdrawn, and dismounted, 
and “scientifically handled ” in every possible fashion 
over dusty country, till they sweated profusely. Their 
only amusement came late in the day when they fell upon 
the battery of Horse Artillery and chased it for two miles. 
This was a personal question, and most of the troopers 
had money on the event; the Gunners saying openly that 
they had the legs of the White Hussars. They were 
wrong. A march-past concluded the campaign, and 
when the Regiment got back to their Lines, the men were 
coated with dirt from spur to chin-strap. 

The White Hussars have one great and peculiar priv¬ 
ilege. They won it at Fontenoy, I think. 

Many Regiments possess special rights such as wear¬ 
ing collars with undress uniform, or a bow of ribbon be¬ 
tween the shoulders, or red and white roses in their 
helmets on certain days of the year. Some rights are 
connected with regimental saints, and some with regi- 

14 


210 


V 

THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS, 

mental successes. All are valued highly ; but none so 
highly as the right of the White Hussars to have the Band 
playing when their horses are being watered in the Lines. 
Only one tune is played, and that tune never varies. I 
don’t know its real name, but the White Hussars call it :— 
“ Take me to Londofi again.” It sounds very pretty. The 
Regiment would sooner be struck off the roster than fore¬ 
go their distinction. 

After the “ dismiss ” was sounded, the officers rode 
off home to prepare for stables*; and the men filed 
into the lines, riding easy. That is to say, they 
opened their tight buttons, shifted their helmets, and 
began to joke or to swear as the humor took them ; the* 
more careful slipping off and easing girths and curbs. A 
good trooper values his mount exactly as much as he 
values himself, and believes, or should believe, that the 
two together are irresistible where women or men, girls 
or guns, are concerned. 

Then the Orderly-Officer gave the order :—‘"Water 
horses,” and the Regiment loafed off to the squadron- 
troughs which were in rear of the stables and between 
these and the barracks. There were four huge troughs, 
one for each squadron, arranged en echelon^ so that the 
whole Regiment could water in ten minutes if it liked. 
But it lingered for seventeen, as a rule, while the Band 
played. 

The Band struck up as the squadrons filed off the 
troughs, and the men slipped their feet out of the stirrups 
and chaffed each other. The sun was just setting in a 
big, hot bed of red cloud, and the road to the Civil Lines 
seemed to run straight into the sun’s eye. There was a 
little dot on the road. It grew and grew till it showed as 
a horse, with a sort of gridiron thing on his back. The 
red cloud glared through the bars of the gridiro-n. Some 


THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS. 


21 


of the troopers shaded their eyes with their hands and 
said:—“What the mischief 'as that there 'orse got on 
'im !" 

In another minute they heard a neigh that every soul 
—horse and man—in the Regiment knew, and saw, head¬ 
ing straight towards the Band, the dead Drum-Horse of 
the White Hussars ! 

On his withers banged and bumped the kettle-drums 
draped in crape, and on his back, very stiff and soldierly, 
sat a bare-headed skeleton. 

The band stopped playing, and, for a moment, there 
was a hush. 

Then some one in E troop—men said it was the Troop- 
Sergeant-Major—swung his horse round and yelled. No 
one can account exactly for what happened afterwards ; 
but it seems that, at least, one man in each troop set an 
example of panic, and the rest followed like sheep. The 
horses that had barely put their muzzles into the troughs 
reared and capered ; but, as soon as the Band broke, 
which it did when the ghost of the Drum-Horse was about 
a furlong distant, all hooves followed suit, and the clatter 
of the stampede—quite different from the orderly throb 
and roar of a movement on parade, or the rough' horse¬ 
play of watering in camp—made them only more terri¬ 
fied. They felt that the men on their backs were afraid 
of something. When horses once know that^ all is over 
except the butchery. 

Troop after troop turned from the troughs and ran— 
anywhere and everywhere — like spilt quicksilver. It 
was a most extraordinary spectacle, for men and horses 
were in all stages of easiness, and the carbine-buckets 
flopping against their sides urged the horses on. Men 
were shouting and cursing, and trying to pull clear of 
the Band which was being chased by the Drum-Horse 


212 


THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS. 


whose rider had fallen forward and seemed to be spurring 
for a wager. 

The Colonel had gone over to the Mess for a drink. 
Most of the officers were with him, and the Subaltern of 
the Day was preparing to go down to the lines, and 
receive the watering reports from the Troop-Sergeant- 
Majors. When ^'■Take me to London again'*stopped, after 
twenty bars, every one in the Mess said :—“ Wjiat on 
earth has happened ? ” A minute later, they heard unmi¬ 
litary noises, and saw, far across the plain, the White 
Hussars scattered, and broken, and flying. 

The Colonel was speechless with rage, for he thought 
that the Regiment had risen against him or was unani¬ 
mously drunk. The Band, a disorganized mob, tore past, 
and at its heels labored the Drum-Horse—the dead and 
buried Drum-Horse—with the jolting, clattering skeleton. 
Hogan-Yale whispered softly to Martyn ;—“ No wire 
will stand that treatment,” and the Band, which had 
doubled like a hare, came back again. But the rest of 
the Regiment was gone, was rioting all over the Province, 
for the dusk had shut in and each man was howling to 
hfs neighbor that the Drum-Horse was on his flank. 
Troop-Horses are far too tenderly treated as a rule. They 
can, on emergencies, do a great deal, even with seventeen 
stone on their backs. As the troopers found out. 

How long this panic lasted I cannot say. I believe 
that when the moon rose the men saw they had nothing 
to fear, and, by twos and threes and half-troops, crept 
back into Cantonments very much ashamed of themselves. 
Meantime, the Drum-Horse, disgusted at his treatment 
by old friends, pulled up, wheeled round, and trotted up 
to the Mess verandah-steps for bread. No one liked to 
run ; but no one cared to go forward till the Colonel 
made a movement and laid hold of the skeleton’s foot 


THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS, 


213 

The Band had halted some distance away, and now came 
back slowly. The Colonel called it, individually and 
collectively, every evil name that occurred to him at the 
time ; for he had set his hand on the bosom of the Drum- 
Horse and found flesh and blood. Then he beat the 
kettle-drums with his clenched fist, and discovered that 
they were but made of silvered paper and bamboo. Next, 
still swearing, he tried to drag the skeleton out of the 
saddle, but found that it had been wired into the cantle. 
The sight of the Colonel, with his arms round the skeleton’s 
pelvis and his knee in the old Drum-Horse’s stomach, was 
striking. Not to say amusing. He worried the thing off 
in a minute or two, and threw it down on the ground, 
saying to the Band :—“ Here, you curs, that’s what 
you’re afraid of.” The skeleton did not look pretty in the 
twilight. The Band-Sergeant seemed to recognize it, for 
he began to chuckle and choke. “ Shall I take it away, 
sir? ” said the Band-Sergeant. “ Yes,” said the Colonel, 

take it to Hell, and ride there yourselves ! ” 

The Band-Sergeant saluted, hoisted the skeleton 
across his saddle-bow, and led off to the stables 
Then the Colonel began to make inquiries for the ree^ 
of the Regiment, and the language he used was wonder¬ 
ful. He would disband the Regiment—he would court’ 
martial every soul in it—he would not command such a 
set of rabble, and so on, and so on. As the men drop¬ 
ped in, his language grew wilder, until at last it exceeded 
the utmost limits of free speech allowed even to a Colonel 
of Horse. 

Martyn took Hogan-Yale aside and suggested compul¬ 
sory retirement from the service as a necessity when ah 
was discovered. Martyn was the weaker man of the two 
Hogan-Yale put up his eyebrows and remarked, firstly, 
that he was the son of a Lord, and secondly, that he was 


THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS. 


cr4 

as innocent as the babe unborn of the theatrical resurrec- 
tion of the Drum-Horse. 

My instructions,” said Yale, with a singularly sweet 
smile, “were that the Drum-Horse should be sent back 
as impressively as possible. I ask you, am I responsible 
if a mule-headed friend sends him back in such a manner 
as to disturb the peace of mind of a regiment of Her 
Majesty’s Cavalry ? ” 

Martyn said :—“ You are a great man, and will in time 
become a General; but I’d give my chance of a troop to 
be safe out of this affair ” 

Providence saved Martyn and Hogan-Yale, The Sec- 
ond-in-Command led the Colonel away to the little cur¬ 
tained alcove wherein the Subalterns of the White Hus¬ 
sars were accustomed to play poker of nights ; and there, 
after many oaths on the Colonel’s part, they talked to¬ 
gether in low tones. I fancy that the Second-in-Com- 
mand must have represented the scare as the work ol 
some trooper whom it would be hopeless to detect; and* 
I know that he dwelt upon the sin and the shame of mak¬ 
ing a public laughing-stock of the scare. 

“ They will call us,” said the Second-in-Command, who 
had really a fine imagination,” they will call us the ‘Fly- 
by-Nights’; they will call us the ‘Ghost Hunters’; they 
will nick-name us from one end of the Army list to the 
other. All the explanations in the world won’t make out¬ 
siders understand that the officers were away when the 
panic began. For the honor of the Regiment and for your 
own sake keep this thing quiet.” 

The Colonel was so exhausted with anger that sooth¬ 
ing him down was not so difficult as might be imagined. 
He was made to see, gently and by degrees, that it was 
obviously impossible to court-martial the whole Regiment 


THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS 


215 

and equally impossible to proceed against any subaltern 
who, in his belief, had any concern in the hoax. 

“ But the beast’s alive ! He's never been shot at all! 
shouted the Colonel. “ Its flat, flagrant disobedience ! 
I’ve known a man broke for less, d—d side less. They’re 
mocking me, I tell you, Mutman ! They’re mocking me ! ” 

Once more, the Second-in-Command set himself to 
soothe the Colonel, and wrestled with him for half-an- 
hour. At the end of that time, the Regimental Sergeant- 
Major reported himself. The situation was rather novel 
to him ; but he was not a man to be put out by circum¬ 
stances. He saluted and said: “Regiment all come 
back. Sir.” Then, to propitiate the Colonel;—“An’none 
of the horses any the worse. Sir.” 

The Colonel only snorted and answered :—“ You’d 
better tuck the men into their cots, then, and see that they 
don’t wake up and cry in the night. ” The Sergeant with¬ 
drew. 

His little stroke of humor pleased the Colonel, and, 
further, he felt slightly ashamed of the language he had 
been using. The Second-in-Command worried him again, 
and the two sat talking far into the night. 

Next day but one, there was a Commanding Officer’s 
parade, and the Colonel harangued the White Hussars 
vigorously. The pith of his speech was that, since the 
Drum-Horse in his old age had proved himself capable of 
cutting up the whole Regiment, he should return to his 
post of pride at the head of the Band, hut the Regiment 
were a set of ruffians with bad consciences. 

The White Hussars shouted, and threw everything 
moveable about them into the air, and when the parade 
was over, they cheered the Colonel till they couldn’t 
speak. No cheers were put up for Lieutenant Hogan 
Yale who smiled very sweetly in the background. 


2i6 the rout of the white hussars. 

Said the Second-in-Command to the Colonel, unoffi¬ 
cially :— 

‘‘ These little things ensure popularity, and do not the 
least affect discipline.” 

** But I went back on my word,” said the Colonel. 

‘‘ Never mind,” said the Second-in-Command. “ The 
White Hussars will follow you anywhere from to-day. 
Regiments are just like women. They will do anything 
for trinketry.” 

A week later, Hogan-Yale received an extraordinary 
letter from some one who signed himself “ Secretary, 
Chancy and Zeal, 3709, E. C.,” and asked for “ the return, 
of our skeleton which we have reason to believe is in 
your possession.” 

Who the deuce is this lunatic who trades in bones ? 
said Hogan-Yale. 

“Beg your pardon. Sir,” said the Band-Sergeant, “but 
the skeleton is with me, an’ I’ll return it if you’ll pay 
the carriage into the Civil Lines. There’s a coffin with it. 
Sir.” 

Hogan-Yale smiled and handed two rupees to the Band- 
Sergeant, saying :—“ Write the date on the skull, will 
you .? ” 

If you doubt this story, and know where to go, you can 
see the date on the skeleton. But don’t mention the matter 
to the White Hussars. 

I happen to know something about it, because I pre¬ 
pared the Drum-Horse for his resurrection. He did not 
take kindly to the skeleton at all. 


TM£ BR0NCKH0K3T DIVORCE CASE, 


217 


THE BRONCKHORST DIVORCE-CASE. 

In the daytime, when she moved about me, 

In the night, when she was sleeping at my side,— 

I was wearied, I was wearied of her presence. 

Day by day and night by night I grew to hate her— 

Would God that she or I had died ! 

Confessions, 

There was a man called Bronckhorst—a three-cornered, 
middle-aged man in the Army—gray as a badger, and, 
some people said, with a touch of country-blood in him. 
That, however, cannot be proved. Mrs. Bronckhorst was 
not exactly young, though fifteen years younger than her 
husband. She was a large, pale, quiet woman, with 
heavy eyelids, over weak eyes, and hair that turned red 
or yellow as the lights fell on it. 

Bronckhorst was not nice in any way. He had no 
respect for the pretty public and private lies that make life 
a little less nasty than it is. His manner towards his 
wife was coarse. There are many things—including 
actual assault with the clenched fist—that a wife will 
endure ; but seldom a wife can bear—as Mrs. Bronckhorst 
bore—with a long course of brutal, hard chaff, making 
light of her weaknesses, her headaches, her small fits of 
gayety, her dresses, her queer little attempts to make her¬ 
self attractive to her husband when she knows that she is 
not what she has been, and—worst of all—the love that 
she spends on her children. That particular sort of heavy- 
handed jest was specially dear to Bronckhorst. I suppose 
that he had first slipped into it, meaning no harm, in-the 


2i8 


THE BRONCKHORST DIVORCE CASE. 


honeymoon, when folk find their ordinary stock of endear¬ 
ments run short, and so go to the other extreme to express 
their feelings. A similar impulse makes a man say :— 
“Hutt, you old beast! ” when a favorite horse nuzzles his 
coat-front. Unluckily, when the reaction of marriage 
sets in, the form of speech remains, and, the tenderness 
having died out, hurts the wife more than she cares to 
say. But Mrs. Bronckhorst was devoted to her “ Teddy '' 
as she called him. Perhaps that was why he objected to 
her. Perhaps—this is only a theory to account for his 
infamous behavior later on—he gave away to the queer, 
savage feeling that sometimes takes by the throat a 
husband twenty years' married, when he sees, across the 
table, the same same face of his wedded wife, and knows 
that, as he has sat facing it, so must he continue to sit 
until day of its death or his own. Most men and all 
women know the spasm. It only lasts for three breaths 
as a rule, must be a “throw-back” to times when men 
and women were rather worse than they are now, and is 
too unpleasant to be discussed. 

Dinner at the Bronckhorst's was an infliction few men 
cared to undergo. Bronckhorst took a pleasure in saying 
things that made his wife wince. When their little 
boy came in at dessert, Bronckhorst used to give him 
half a glass of wine, and, naturally enough, the poor 
little mite got first riotous, next miserable, and was re¬ 
moved screaming. Bronckhorst asked if that was the 
way Teddy usually behaved, and whether Mrs. Bronck¬ 
horst could not spare some of her time to teach the “lit¬ 
tle beggar decency.” Mrs. Bronckhorst, who loved 
the boy more than her own life, tried not to cry—her 
spirit seemed to have been broken by her marriage. 
Lastly, Bronckhorst used to say:—“There! That’ll do, 
that’ll do. For God’s sake try to behave like a rational 


THE BRONCKHOKST DIVORCE CASE. 


219 

woman. Go in to the drawing-room.” Mrs. Bronck- 
horst would go, trying to carry it all off with a smile ; 
and the guest of the evening would feel angery and un¬ 
comfortable. 

After three years of this cheerful life — for Mrs. 
Bronckhorst had no woman-friends to talk to—the Sta¬ 
tion was startled by the news that Bronckhorst had in¬ 
stituted proceedings on the criminal count, against a man 
called Biel, who certainly had been rather attentive to 
Mrs. Bronckhorst whenever she had appeared in pub¬ 
lic. The utter want of reserve with which Bronckhorst 
treated his own dishonor helped us to know that the 
evidence against Biel would be entirely circumstantial 
and native. There were no letters ; but Bronckhorst 
said openly that he would rack Heaven and Earth until 
he saw Biel superintending the manufacture of carpets in 
the Central Jail. Mrs. Bronckhorst kept entirely to her 
house, and let charitable folks say what they pleased. 
Opinions were divided. Some two-thirds of the Sta¬ 
tion jumped at once to the conclusion that Biel was 
guilty ; but a dozen men who knew and liked him held 
by him. Biel was furious and surprised. He denied 
the whole thing, and vowed that he would thrash 
Bronckhorst within an inch of his life. No jury, we 
knew, could convict a man on the criminal count on 
native evidence in a land where you can buy a murder- 
charge, including the corpse, all complete for fifty-four 
rupees; but Biel did not care to scrape through by the 
benefit of a doubt He wanted the whole thing cleared : 
but as he said one night:—“He can prove anything 
with servants’ evidence, and I’ve only my bare word.” 
This was about a month before the case came on; and 
beyond agreeing with Biel, we could do little. All that 
we could be sure of was that the native evidence would 


220 


THE BRONCKHORST DIVORCE CASE. 


be bad enough to blast Biel's character for the rest of 
his service ; for when a native begins perjury he perjures 
himself thoroughly. He does not boggle over details. 

Some genius at the end of the table whereat the 
affair was being talked over, said :—“Look here! I 
don't believe lawyers are any good. Get a man to wire 
to Strickland, and beg him to come down and pull us 
through." 

Strickland was about a hundred and eighty miles up 
the line. He had not long been married to Miss You- 
ghal, but he scented in the telegram a chance of return 
to the old detective work that his soul lusted after, and 
next night he came in and heard our story. He finish¬ 
ed his pipe and said oracularly :—“We must get at the 
evidence. Oorya bearer, Mussalman khit and methrani- 
ayah, I suppose, are the pillars of the charge. I am on 
in this piece ; but I’m afraid I’m getting rusty in 
my talk.” 

He rose and went into Biel's bedroom where his 
trunk had been put, and shut the door. An hour later, 
we heard him say :—“ I hadn’t the heart to part with 
my old make-ups when I married. Wtll this do } " 
There was a lothely faquir salaaming in the doorway. 

“ Now lend me fifty rupees," said Strickland, “ and 
give me your Words of Honor that you won’t tell my 
Wife." 

He got all that he asked for, and left the house while 
the table drank his health. What he did only he him¬ 
self knows. A faquir hung about Bronckhorst’s com¬ 
pound for twelve days. Then a mehter appeared, and 
when Biel heard of him, he said that Strickland was an 
angel full-fledged. Whether the mehter made love to 
Janki, Mrs. Bronckhorst's ayah, is a question which con¬ 
cerns Strickland exclusively. 


THE BlWNClCHOkST DIVORCE CASE. 


221 


He came back at the end of three weeks, and said 
quietly:—“ You spoke the truth, Biel. The whole busi¬ 
ness is put up from beginning to end. ‘ Jove ! It almost 
astonishes me ! That Bronckhorst-beast isn’t fit to live.” 

There was uproar and shouting, and Biel said :—■ 
“ How are you going to prove it ? You can’t say 
that you’ve been trespassing on Bronckhorst’s com¬ 
pound in disguise ! ” 

“ No,” said Strickland. ” Tell your lawyer-fool, whoever 
he is, to get up something strong about ‘ inherent im¬ 
probabilities’ and ‘ discrepancies of evidence.” He won’t 
have to speak, but it will make him happy. Fm going 
to run this business.” 

Biel held his tongue, and the other men waited to see 
what would happen. They trusted Strickland as men 
trust quiet men. When the case came off the Court 
was crowded. Strickland hung about in the verandah 
of the Court, till he met the Mohammedan khitmatgar. 
Then he murmured a faquir s blessing in his ear, and 
asked him how his second wife did. The man spun 
round, and, as he looked into the eyes of “ Estreeken 
his jaw dropped. You must remember that be¬ 
fore Strickland was married, he was, as I have told you 
already, a power among natives. Strickland whispered 
a rather coarse vernacular proverb to the effect that he 
was abreast of all that was going on, and went into the 
Court armed with a gut trainer’s-whip. 

The Mohammedan was the first witness and Strick¬ 
land beamed upon him from the back of the Court. 
The man moistened his lips with his tongue and, in his 
abject fear of “ Estreeken Sahib ” the faquir^ went back 
on every detail of his evidence—said he was a poor man 
and God was his witness that he had forgotten every 
thing that Bronckhorst Sahib had told him to vSay. 


2 22 THE BRONCkHORST divorce CASE. 

Between his terror of Strickland, the Judge, and Bronck- 
horst he collapsed, weeping. 

Then began the panic among the witnesses. Janki, 
the ayah, leering chastely behind her veil, turned gray, 
and the bearer left the Court. He said that his 
Mamma was dying and that it was not wholesome for 
any man to lie unthriftily in the presence of “ Estreeken 

Sahihr 

Biel said politely to Bronckhorst :—“ Your witnesses 
don’t seem to work. Haven’t you any forged letters to 
produce .? ” But Bronckhorst was swaying to and fro in 
his chair, and there was a dead pause after Biel had been 
called to order. 

Bronckhorst’s Counsel saw the look on his client’s 
face, and without more ado, pitched his papers on the 
little green baize table, and mumbled something about 
having been misinformed. The whole Court applauded 
wildly, like soldiers at a theatre, and the Judge began to 
say what he thought. 


Biel came out of the place, and Strickland dropped 
a gut trainer’s-whip in the verandah. Ten minutes 
later, Beil was cutting Bronckhorst into ribbons behind 
the old Court cells, quietly and without scandal. What 
was left of Bronckhorst was sent home in a carriage ; 
and his wife wept over it and nursed it into a man 
again. 

Later on, after Biel had managed to hush up the 
counter-charge against Bronckhorst of fabricating false 
evidence, Mrs. Bronckhorst, with her faint, watery smile, 
said that there had been a mistake, but it wasn’t her 
Teddy’s fault altogether. She would wait till her Teddy 
came back to her. Perhaps he had grown tired of her, 
or she had tried his patience, and perhaps we wouldn’t 



TEE BRONCKHORST DIVORCE CASE. 


253 


cut her any more, and perhaps the mothers would let 
their children play with “little Teddy” again. He was 
so lonely. Then the Station invited Mrs. Bronckhorst 
everywhere, until Bronckhorst was fit to appear in public 
when he went Home and took his wife with him. 
According to the latest advices, her Teddy did “come 
back to her,” and they are moderately happy. Though, 
of course, he can never forgive her the thrashing that she 
was the indirect means of getting for him. 

What Biel wants to know is:—“Why didn’t I press 
home the charge against the Bronckhorst-brute, and have 
him run in ” 

What Mrs. Strickland wants to know is :—“ How did 
my husband bring such a lovely, lovely Waler from your 
Station .? I know all his money-affairs ; and Tm certain 
he didn’t buy it.” 

What I want to know is :—“ How do women like Mrs. 
Bronckhorst come to marry men like Bronckhorst t ” 

And my conundrum is the most unanswerable of the 
three. 



224 


VENUS ANNODOMINE 


VENUS ANNODOMINI. 

And the years went on, as the years must do ; 

But our great Diana was always new— 

Fresh, and blooming, and blonde, and fair, 

With azure eyes and with aureate hair; 

And all the folk, as they came or went, 

Offered her praise to her heart’s content. 

Diana of Ephesus. 

She had nothing to do with Number Eighteen in the 
Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican, between Visconti’s Ceres 
and the God of the Nile. She was purely an Indian 
deity—an Anglo-Indian deity, that is to say—and we 
called her the Venus Annodomini, to distinguish her from 
other Annodominis of the same everlasting order. There 
was a legend among the Hills that she had once been 
young ; but no living man was prepared to come forward 
and say boldly that the legend was true. Men rode up to 
Simla, and stayed, and went away and made their name 
and did their life’s work, and returned again to find the 
Venus Annodomini exactly as they had left her. She 
was as immutable as the Hills. But not quite so green. 
All that a girl of eighteen could do in the way of 
riding, walking, dancing, picnicking and over-exertion 
generally, the Venus Annodomini did, and showed no 
sign of fatigue or trace of weariness. Besides perpetual 
youth, she had discovered, men said, the secret of per¬ 
petual health ; and her fame spread about the land. From 
a mere woman, she grew to be an Institution, insomuch 
that no young man could be said to be properly formed, 


VEN-US ANNODOMJNL 


225 

who had not, at some time or another, worshipped at the 
shrine of the Venus Annodomini. There was no one 
like her, though there were many imitations. Six years 
in her eyes were no more than six months to ordinary 
women ; and ten made less visible impression on her than 
does a week’s fever on an ordinary woman. Every one 
adored her, and in return she was pleasant and courteous 
to nearly every one. Youth had been a habit of hers for 
so long, that she could not part with it—never realized, 
in fact, the necessity of parting with it—and took for her 
more chosen associates young people. 

Among the worshippers of the Venus Annodomini 
was young Gayerson. “ Very Young Gayerson,” he 
was called to distinguish him from his father “Young” 
Gayerson, a Bengal Civilian, who affected the customs 
—as he had the heart—of youth. “Very Young” Gayer¬ 
son was not content to worship placidly and for form’s 
sake, as the other young men did, or to accept a ride or 
a dance, or a talk from the Venus Annodomini in a 
properly humble and thankful spirit. He was exacting, 
and, therefore, the Venus Annodomini repressed him. 
He worried himself nearly sick in a futile sort of way 
over her ; and his devotion and earnestness made him ap¬ 
pear either shy or boisterous or rude, as his mood might 
vary, by the side of the older men who, with him, bowed 
before the Venus Annodomini. She was sorry for him. 
He reminded her of a lad who, three-and-twenty years 
ago, had professed a boundless devotion for her, and for 
whom in return she had felt something more than a 
week’s weakness. But that lad had fallen away and 
married another woman less than a year after he had 
worshipped her ; and the Venus Annodomini had almost 
—not quite—forgotten his name. “Very Young” Gay¬ 
erson had the same big blue eyes and the same way of 

15 


226 


VENUS ANNODOMINI. 


pouting his underlip when he was excited or troubled 
But the Venus Annodomini checked him sternly none the 
less. Too much zeal was a thing that she did not 
approve ofj preferring instead, a tempered and sober 
tenderness. 

“Very Young” Gayerson was miserable, and took no 
trouble to conceal his wretchedness. He was in the 
Army—a Line regiment I think, but am not certain— 
and, since his face was a looking-glass and his forehead 
an open book, by reason of his innocence, his brothers 
in arms made his life a burden to him and embittered 
his naturally sweet disposition. No one except “Very 
Young” Ga5^erson, and he never told his views, knew 
how old “Very Young” Gayerson believed the Venus 
Annodomini to be. Perhaps he thought her five and 
twenty, or perhaps she told him that she was this age. 
“Very Young” Gayerson would have forded the Gugger 
in flood to carry her lightest word, and had implicit faith 
in her. Every one liked him, and every one was sorry 
when they saw him so bound a slave of the Venus Anno¬ 
domini. Every one, too, admitted that it was not her 
fault; for the Venus Annodomini differed from Mrs. 
Hauksbee and Mrs. Reiver in this particular—she never 
moved a finger to attract any one; but, like Ninon 
de TEnclos, all men were attracted to her. One could 
admire and respect Mrs. Hauksbee, despise and avoid 
Mrs. Reiver, but one was forced to adore the Venus 
Annodomini. 

“Very Young” Gayerson’s papa held a Division or a 
Collectorate or something administrative in a particularly 
unpleasant part of Bengal—full of Babus who edited 
newspapers proving that “ Young ” Gayerson was a 
“Nero” and a “Scylla’’ and a “ Charybdis ” ; and, in 
in addition to the Babus, there was a good deal of dys- 



VENUS ANNODOMINI. 


227 


entery and cholera abroad for nine months of the year. 
“Young” Gayerson—he was about five and forty— 
rather liked Babus, they amused him, but he objected to 
dysentery, and when he could get away, went to Darjilb 
ing for the most part. This particular season he fancied 
that he would come up to Simla and see his boy. The 
boy was not altogether pleased. He told the Venus 
Annodomini that his father was coming up, and she 
flushed a little and said that she should be delighted 
to make his acquaintance. Then she looked long and 
thoughtfully at “Very Young” Gayerson ; because she 
was very, very sorry for him, and he was a very, very 
big idiot. 

“ My daughter is coming out in a fortnight, Mr. Gayer¬ 
son, ” she said. 

“ Your whai said he. 

“Daughter,” said the Venus Annodomini. “She’s 
been out for a year at Home already, and I want her to 
see a little of India. She is nineteen and a very sensible 
nice girl I believe.” 

“Very Young” Gayerson, who was a short twenty- 
two years old, nearly fell out of his chair with astonish¬ 
ment ; for he had persisted in believing, against all belief, 
in the youth of the Venus Annodomini. She, with her 
back to the curtained window, watched the effect of her 
sentences and smiled. 

“Very Young” Gayerson’s papa came up twelve days 
later, and had not been in Simla four and twenty hours, 
before two men, old acquaintances of his, had told him 
how “Very Young” Gayerson had been conducting 
himself. 

“ Young ” Gayerson laughed a good deal, and inquired 
whc the Venus Annodomini might be. Which proves 
that he had been living in Bengal where nobody knows 


228 


VENUS ANNODOMINI. 


anything except the rate of Exchange. Then he said 
“boys will be boys/'and spoke to his son about the 
matter. “Very Young" Gayerson said that he felt 
wretched and unhappy; and “Young" Gayerson said 
that he repented of having helped to bring a fool into the 
world. He suggested that his son had better cut his 
leave short and go down to his duties. This led to an 
unfilial answer, and relations were strained, until “Young" 
Gayerson demanded that they should call on the Venus 
Annodomini. “Very Young" Gayerson went with his 
papa, feeling, somehow, uncomfortable and small. 

The Venus Annodomini received them graciously and 
“Young" Gayerson said:—“By Jove! It’s Kitty h’ 
“ Very Young " Gayerson would have listened for an 
explanation, if his time had not been taken up with 
trying to talk to a large, handsome, quiet, well-dressed 
girl—introduced to him by the Venus Annodomini as her 
daughter. She was far older in manner, style and repose 
than “ Very Young " Gayerson ; and, as he realized this 
thing, he felt sick. 

Presently, he heard the Venus Annodomini saying:— 
“ Do you know that your son is one of my most devoted 
admirers ?" 

“ I don’t wonder," said “ Young ’’ Gayerson. Here he 
raised his voice :—“ He follows his father’s footsteps. 
Didn’t I worship the ground you trod on, ever so long 
ago, Kitty—and you haven’t changed since then. How 
strange it all seems ! ’’ 

“Very Young" Gayerson said nothing. His conversa¬ 
tion with the daughter of the Venus Annodomini was, 
through the rest of the call, fragmentary and disjointed. 

“ At five to-morrow then," said the Venus Annodomini 
“ And mind you are punctual.” 



VENUS ANNODOMINI. 


229 


At five punctually,” said “ Young ” Gayerson. “You 
can lend your old father a horse I dare say, youngster, 
can’t you ? I’m going for a ride to-morrow afternoon.” 

“ Certainly,” said “ Very Young ” Gayerson. “I am 
going down to-morrow morning. My ponies are at your 
service. Sir.” 

The Venus Annodomini looked at him across the half- 
light of the room, and her big gray eyes filled with 
moisture. She rose and shook hands with him. 

“ Good-bye, Tom,” whispered the Venus Annodomini 


230 


THE BIS AT A OF POOR EE. 


THE BISARA OF POOREE. 

Little Blind Fish, thou art marvellous wise, 

Little Blind Fish, who put out thy eyes ? 

Open thine ears while I whisper my wish— 

Bring me a lover, thou little Blind Fish. 

The Char7n of the Bisara. 

Some natives say that it came from the other side oi 
Kulu, where the eleven-inch Temple Sapphire is. Others 
that it was made at the Devil-Shrine of Ao-Chung in Thi¬ 
bet, was stolen by a Kafir, from him by a Gurkha, from 
him again by a Lahouli, from him by a khitmatgar.^ and 
by this latter sold to an Englishman, so all i*s virtue was 
lost: because, to work properly, the Bisara of Pooree 
must be stolen—with bloodshed if possible, but, at any 
rate, stolen. 

These stories of the coming into India are all false. It 
was made at Pooree ages since—the manner of its mak. 
ing would fill a small book—was stolen by one of the 
Temple dancing-girls there, for her own purposes, and 
then passed on from hand to hand, steadily northward, 
till it reached Hanla: always bearing the same name— 
the Bisara of Pooree. In shape it is a tiny, square box of 
silver, studded outside with eight small balas-rubies. 
Inside the box, which opens with a spring, is a little, eye¬ 
less fish, carved from some sort of dark, shiny nut and 
wrapped in a shred of faded gold-cloth. That is the 
Bisara of Pooree, and it were better for a man to 
take a king cobra in his hand than to touch the Bisara of 
Pooree. 


THE BISARA OF POORER. 


231 

All kinds of magic are out of date, and done away with 
except in India where nothing changes in spite of the 
shiny, toy-scum stuff that people call “civilization.” Any 
man who knows about the Bisara of Pooree will tell you 
what its powers are—always supposing that it has been 
honestly stolen. It is the only regularly working, trust¬ 
worthy love-charm in the country, with one exception. 

[The other charm is in the hands of a trooper of the 
Nizam’s Horse, at a place called Tuprani, due north of 
Hyderabad.] This can be depended upon for a fact. 
Some one else may explain it. 

If the Bisara be not stolen, but given or bought or 
found, it turns against its owner in three years, and leads 
to ruin or death. This is another fact which you may 
explain when you have time. Meanwhile, you can laugh 
at it. At present, the Bisara is safe on an ^^^a-pony’s 
neck, inside the blue bead-necklace that keeps off the 
Evil-eye. If the ^^>^^z-driver ever finds it, and wears it, 
or gives it to his wife, I am sorry for him. 

A very dirty hill-cooly woman, with goitre, owned it 
at Theog in 1884. It came into Simla from the north 
before Churton’s khitmatgar bought it, and sold it, for 
three times its silver-value, to Churton, who collected 
curiosities. The servant knew no more what he had 
bought than the master; but a man looking over 
Churton’s collection of curiosities—Churton was an 
Assistant Commissioner by the way—saw and held his 
tongue. He was an Englishman ; but knew how to be¬ 
lieve. Which shows that he was different from most 
Englishmen. He knew that it was dangerous to have 
any share in the little box when working or dormant; for 
unsought Love is a terrible gift. 

Pack—“Grubby” Pack, as we used to call him—was, 
in every way, a nasty little tpan who piust have crawled 


232 


THE BISARA OF POORER. 


into the Army by mistake. He was three inches taller 
than his sword, but not half so strong. And the sword 
was a fifty-shilling, tailor-made one. Nobody liked him, 
and, I suppose, it was his wizenedness and worthless¬ 
ness that made him fall so hopelessly in love with Miss 
Hollis, who was good and sweet, and five foot seven in 
her tennis-shoes. He was not content with falling in 
love quietly, but brought all the strength of his miser¬ 
able little nature into the business. If he had not been so 
objectionable, one might have pitied him. He vapored, 
and fretted, and fumed, and trotted up and down, and 
tried to make himself pleasing in Miss Hollis’s big, quiet, 
gray eyes, and failed. It was one of the cases that you 
sometimes meet, even in this country where we marry 
by Code, of a really blind attachment all on one side, 
without the faintest possibility of return. Miss Hollis 
looked on Pack as some sort of vermin running about the 
road. He had no prospects beyond Captain’s pay, and 
no wits to help that out by one anna. In a large-sized 
man, love like his would have been touching. In a good 
man it would have been grand. He being what he was, 
it was only a nuisance. 

You will believe this much. What you will not be¬ 
lieve, is what follows : Churton, and The Man who 
Knew what the Bisara was, were lunching at the Simla 
Club together. Churton was complaining of life in gen¬ 
eral. His best mare had rolled out of stable down the 
hill and had broken her back ; his decisions were being 
reversed by the upper Courts more than an Assistant 
Commissioner of eight years’ standing has a right to ex¬ 
pect ; he knew liver and fever, and, for weeks past, had 
felt out of sorts. Altogether, he was disgusted and dis¬ 
heartened. 

Simla Club dining-room is built, as all the world 


THE BISARA OF FOOREE. 


233 

knows, in two sections, with an arch-arrangement divid¬ 
ing them. Come in, turn to your own left, take the table 
under the window, and you cannot see any one who has 
come in, turned to the right, and taken a table on the 
right side of the arch. Curiously enough, every word 
that you say can be heard, not only by the other diner, 
but by the servants beyond the screen through which they 
bring dinner. This is worth knowing : an echoing-room 
is a trap to be forewarned against. 

Half in fun, and half hoping to be believed, The Man 
who Knew told Churton the story of the Bisara of 
Pooree at rather greater length than I have told it to 
you in this place ; winding up with a suggestion that 
Churton might as well throw the little box down the 
hill and see whether all his troubles would go with it. 
In ordinary ears, English ears, the tale was Only an 
interesting bit of folk-lore. Churton laughed, said that 
he felt better for his tiffin, and went out. Pack had 
been tiffining by himself to the right of the arch, and 
had heard everything. He was nearly mad with his 
absurd infatuation for Miss Hollis, that all Simla had 
been laughing about. 

It is a curious thing that, when a man hates or loves 
beyond reason, he is ready to go beyond reason to gratify 
his feelings. Which he would not do for money or 
power merely. Depend upon it, Solomon would never 
have built altars to Ashtaroth and all those ladies with 
queer names, if there had not been trouble of some kind 
in his zenana, and nowhere else. But this is beside the 
story. The facts of the case are these : Pack called on 
Churton next day when Churton was out, left his card, 
and stole the Bisara of Pooree from its place under the 
clock on the mantel-piece ! Stole it like the thief he was 
by nature. Thiee days later, all Simla was electrified 


234 


THE BISARA OB POORER. 


by the news that Miss Hollis had accepted Pack—the 
shrivelled rat, Pack! Do you desire clearer evidence 
than this ? The Bisara of Pooree had been stolen, and it 
worked as it had always done when won by foul means. 

There are three or four times in a man’s life when he 
is justified in meddling with other people’s affairs to play 
Providence. 

The Man who Knew felt that he was justified; but 
believing and acting on a belief are quite different things. 
The insolent satisfaction of Pack as he ambled by the 
side of Miss Hollis, and Churton’s striking release from 
liver, as soon as the Bisara of Pooree had gone, decided 
the Man. He explained to Churton, and Churton laughed, 
because he was not brought up to believe that men on 

the Government House List steal-at least little things. 

But the miraculous acceptance by Miss Hollis of that 
tailor. Pack, decided him to take steps on suspicion. He 
vowed that he only wanted to find out where his ruby- 
studded silver box had vanished to. You cannot accuse 
a man on the Government House List of stealing. And 
if you rifle his room, you are a thief yourself. Churton, 
prompted by The Man who Knew, decided on burglary. 
If he found nothing in Pack’s room .... but it is not nice 
to think of what would have happened in that case. 

Pack went to a dance at Benmore—Benmore was 
Benmore in those days, and not an office—and danced 
fifteen walzes out of twenty-two with Miss Hollis. 
Churton and The Man took all the keys that they could 
lay hands on, and went to Pack’s room in the hotel, 
certain that his servants would be away. Pack was a 
cheap soul. He had not purchsed a decent cash-box to 
keep his papers in, but one of those native imitations 
that you buy for ten rupees. It opened to any sort of 



THE BISARA OF POO REE. 


235 

key, and there at the bottom,, under Pack’s Insurance 
Policy, lay the Bisara of Pooree ! 

Churton called Pack names, put the Bisara of Pooree in 
his pocket, and went to the dance with The Man. At 
least, he came in time for supper, and saw the beginning 
of the end in Miss Hollis’s eyes. She was hysterical 
after supper, and was taken away by her Mamma. 

At the dance, with the abominable Bisara in his 
pocket, Churton twisted his foot on one of the steps 
leading down to the old Rink, and had to be sent home 
in a rickshaw, grumbling. He did not believe in the 
Bisara of Pooree any the more for this manifestation, but 
he sought out Pack and called him some ugly names ; and 
“ thief” was the mildest of them. Pack took the names 
with the nervous smile of a little man who wants both 
soul and body to resent an insult, and went his way 
There was no public scandal. 

A week later, Pack got his definite dismissal from Miss 
Hollis. There had been a mistake in the placing of her 
affections, she said. So he went away to Madras, where 
he can do no great harm even if he lives to be a Colonel. 

Churton insisted upon The Man who Knew taking the 
Bisara of Pooree as a gift. The Man took it, went down 
to the Cart-Road at once, found an e^^a-pony with a blue 
bead-necklace, fastened the Bisara of Pooree inside the 
necklace with a piece of shoe-string and thanked Heaven 
that he was rid of a danger. Remember, in case you 
ever find it, that you must not destroy the Bisara of Pooree. 
I have not time to explain why just now, but the power 
lies in the little wooden fish. Mister Gubernatis or 
Max Muller could tell you more about it than I. 

You will say that all this story is made up. Very well. 
If ever you come across a little, silver, ruby-studded box, 
seven-eighth of an inch long by three-quarters wide, with 


THS BISARA OF POOREE, 


236 

a dark-brown wooden fish, wrapped in gold cloth, inside 
it, keep it. Keep it for three years, and then you will dis¬ 
cover for yourself whether my story is true or false. 

Better still, steal it as Pack did, and you will be sorry 
that you had not killed yourself in the beginning. 


TIi£ GATE OF THE HUNDRED SORROWS. 


m 


THE GATE OF A HUNDRED SORROWS. 

“ If I can attain Heaven for a pice, why should you be envious ? ” 

Opium Stnoker's Proverb. 

This is no work of mine. My friend, Gabral Misquitta. 
the half-caste, spoke it all, between moonset and morn¬ 
ing, six weeks before he died ; and I took it down from his 
mouth as he answered my questions, so :— 

It lies between the Copper-smith’s Gully and the pipe- 
stem sellers’ quarter, within a hundred yards, too, as 
the crow flies, of the Mosque of Wazir Khan. I don’t 
mind telling any one this much, but I defy him to find 
the Gate, however well he may think he knows the City. 
You might even go through the very gully it stands in a 
hundred times, and be none the wiser. We used to call 
the gully, “ the Gully of the Black Smoke,” but its native 
name is altogether different of course. A loaded donkey 
couldn’t pass between the walls ; and, at one point, just 
before you reach the Gate, a bulged house-front makes 
people go along all sideways. 

It isn’t really a gate though. It’s a house. Old Fung- 
Tching had it first five years ago. He was a boot-maker 
in Calcutta. They say that he murdered his wife there 
when he was drunk. That was why he dropped bazar- 
rum and took to the Black Smoke instead. Later on, he 
came up north and opened the Gate as a house where you 
could get your smoke in peace and quiet. Mind you, it 
was 2i pukka, respectable opium-house, and not one of 


238 the gate of the hundred sorrows. 

those stifling, sweltering chandoo-khanas, that you can find 
all over the City. No; the old man knew his business 
thoroughly, and he was most clean for a Chinaman. He 
was a one-eyed little chap, not much more than five feet 
high, and both his middle fingers were gone. All the 
same, he was the handiest man at rolling black pills I 
have ever seen. Never seemed to be touched by the 
Smoke, either ; and what he took day and night, night 
and day, was a caution. Fve been at it five years, and 
I can do my fair share of the Smoke with anyone ; but I 
was a child to Fung-Tching that way. All the same, the 
old man was keen on his money, very keen; and that’s 
what I can’t understand. I heard he saved a good deal 
before he died, but his nephew has got all that now ; and 
the old man’s gone back to China to be buried. 

He kept the big upper room, where his best customers 
gathered, as neat as a new pin. In one corner used to 
stand Fung-Tching’s Joss—almost as ugly as Fung-Tching 
—and there were always sticks burning under his nose ; 
but you never smelt ’em when the pipes were going 
thick. Opposite the Joss was Fung-Tohing’s coffin. He 
had spent a good deal of his savings on that, and when¬ 
ever a new man came to the Gate he was always intro¬ 
duced to it. It was lacquered black, with red and gold 
writings on it, and I’ve heard that Fung-Tching brought 
it out all the way from China. I don’t know whether 
that’s true or not, but I know that, if I came first in the 
evening, I used to spread my mat just at the foot of it. 
It was a quiet corner you see, and a sort of breeze from 
the gully came in at the window now and then. Besides 
the mats, there was no other furniture in the room—only 
the coffin, and the old Joss all green and blue and purple 
with age and polish. 

Fung-Tching never told us why he called the place 


THE GATE OF THE HUNDRED SORROWS. 239 

“The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows/' (He was the only 
Chinaman I know who used bad-sounding’ fancy names. 
Most of them are flowery. As you U see in Calcutta.) 
We used to find that out for ourselves. Nothing grows 
on you so much, if you’re white, as the Black Smoke. A 
yellow man is made different. Opium doesn’t tell on 
him scarcely at all; but white and black suffer a good 
deal. Of course, there are some people that the Smoke 
doesn't touch any more than tobacco would at first. 
They just dose a bit, as one would fall asleep naturally, 
and next morning they are almost fit for work. Now, 
I was one of that sort when I began, but I’ve been at it 
for five years pretty steadily, and its different now. 
There was an old aunt of mine, down Agra way, and 
she left me a little at her death. About sixty rupees a 
month secured. Sixty isn’t much. I can recollect a time, 
'seems hundreds and hundreds of years ago, that I was 
getting my three hundred a month, and pickings, when 
I was working on a big timber contract in Calcutta. 

I didn’t stick to that work for long. The Black 
Smoke does not allow of much other business; and 
even though I am very little affected by it, as men go 
I couldn’t do a day’s work now to save my life. After 
all, sixty rupees is what I want. When old Fung-Tching 
was alive he used to draw the money for me, give me 
about half of it to live on (I eat very little), and the rest 
he kept himself I was free of the Gate at any time of 
the day and night, and could smoke and sleep there when 
I liked, so I didn’t care. I know the old man made a good 
thing out of it; but that’s no matter. Nothing matters 
much to me ; and, besides, the money always came fresh 
and fresh each month. 

There was ten of us met at the Gate when the place was 
first opened. Me, and two Baboos from a Government 


240 the gate of the hundred sorrows. 

Office somewhere in Anarkulli, but they got the sack and 
couldn’t pay (no man who has to work in the daylight can 
do the Black Smoke for any length of time straight on); a 
Chinaman that was Fung-Tching’s nephew; a bazar- 
woman that had got a lot of money somehow; an English 
loafer—Mac-Somebody I think, but I have forgotten—that 
smoked heaps, but never seemed to pay anything (they 
said he had saved Fung-Tching’s life at some trial in Cal¬ 
cutta when he was a barrister); another Eurasian, like 
myself, from Madras ; a half-caste woman, and a couple 
of men who said they had come from the North. I think 
they must have been Persians or Afghans or something. 
There are not more than five of us living now, but we 
come regular. I don’t know what happened to the Baboos ; 
but the bazar-woman she died after six months of the 
Gate, and I think Fung-Tching took her bangles and nose¬ 
ring for himself. But Fm not certain. The Englishman, 
he drank as well as smoked, and he dropped off. One of 
the Persians got killed in a row at night by the big well 
near the mosque a long time ago, and the Police shut up 
the well, because they said it was full of foul air. They 
found him dead at the bottom of it. So, you see, there is 
only me, the Chinaman, the half-caste woman that we call 
the Memsahib (she used to live with Fung-Tching), the 
other Eurasian, and one of the Persians. The Memsahib 
looks very old now. 1 think she was a young woman 
when the Gate was opened; but we are all old for the 
matter of that. Hundreds and hundreds of years old. It 
is very hard to keep count of time in the Gate, and besides, 
time doesn’t matter to me. I draw my sixty rupees fresh 
and fresh every month. A very, very long while ago, 
when I used to be getting three hundred and fifty rupees 
a month, and pickings, on a big timber-contract at Cal¬ 
cutta, I had a wife of sorts. But she’s dead now. People 


THE GATE OF THE HUNDRED SORROWS. 


241 


said that 1 killed her by taking to the Black Smoke. Per^ 
haps I did, but it’s so long since that it doesn’t matter. 
Sometimes when I first came to the Gate, I used to feel 
sorry for it; but that’s all over and done with long ago, 
and I draw my sixty rupees fresh and fresh every month, 
and am quite happy. Not drunk happy, you know, but 
always quiet and soothed and contented. 

How did I take to ^t.? It began at Calcutta. I used to 
try it in my own house, just to see what it was like. I 
never went very far, but I think my wife must have 
died then. Anyhow, I found myself here, and got to 
know Fung-Tching. I don’t remember rightly how that 
came about ; but he told me of the Gate and I used to go 
there, and, somehow, I have never got away from it 
since. Mind you, though, the Gate was a respectable 
place in Fung-Tching’s time where you could becomfort- 
able, and not at all like the chandoo-khanas where the nig¬ 
gers go. No ; it was clean and quiet, and not crowded. 
Of course, there were others besides us ten and the man ; 
but we always had a mat apiece, with a wadded woollen 
head-piece, all covered with black and red dragons and 
things ; just like the coffin in the corner. 

At the end of one’s third pipe the dragons used to move 
about and fight. I’ve watched ’em, many and many a 
night through. I used to regulate my Smoke that way, 
and now it takes a dozen pipes to make ’em stir. Besides, 
they are all torn and dirty, like the mats, and old Fung- 
Tching is dead. He died a couple of years ago, and gave 
me the pipe I always use now—a silver one, with queer 
beasts crawling up and down the receiver-bottle below 
the cup. Before that, I think, I used a big bamboo stem 
with a copper cup, a very small one, and a green jade 
mouthpiece. It was a little thicker than a walking-stick 
stem, and smoked sweet, very sweet. The bamboo 


242 the gate of the hundred sorrows. 

seemed to suck up the smoke. Silver doesn't, and I’ve 
got to clean it out now and then, that’s a great deal of 
trouble, but I smoke it for the old man’s sake. He must 
have made a good thing out of me, but he always gave 
me clean mats and pillows, and the best stuff you could 
get anywhere. 

When he died, his nephew Tsin-ling took up the Gate, 
and he called it the “ Temple of the Three Possessions 
but we old ones speak of it as the “ Hundred Sorrows,” 
all the same. The nephew does things very shabbily, and 
I think the Memsahib must help him. She lives with him ; 
same as she used to do with the old man. The two let 
in all sorts of low people, niggers and all, and the Black 
Smoke isn’t as good as it used to be. I’ve found burnt 
bran in my pipe over and over again. The old man would 
have died if that had happened in his time. Besides, the 
room is never cleaned, and all the mats are torn and cut 
at the edges. The coffin is gone—gone to China again 
—with the old man and two ounces of smoke inside it, 
in case he should want ’em on the way. 

The Joss doesn’t get so many sticks burnt under his 
nose as he used to ; that’s a sign of ill-luck, as sure as 
Death. He’s all brown, too, and no one ever attends to 
him. That’s the Memsahib's work, I know ; because, 
when Tsin-ling tried to burn gilt paper before him, she 
said it was a waste of money, and, if he kept a stick 
burning very slowly, the Joss wouldn’t know the differ¬ 
ence. So now we’ve got the sticks mixed with a lot of 
glue, and they take half-an-hour longer to burn, and 
smell stinky. Let alone the smell of the room by itself. 
No business can get on if they try that sort of thing. 
The Joss doesn’t like it. I can see that. Late at night, 
sometimes, he turns all sorts of queer colors—blue and 
green and red—just as he used to do when old Fung- 


THE GATE OF THE HUNDRED SORROWS. 243 

Tching was alive ; and he rolls his eyes and stamps his 
feet like a devil. 

I don’t know why I don’t leave the place and smoke 
quietly in a little room of my own in the bazar. Most 
like, Tsin-ling would kill me if I went away—he draws 
my sixty rupees now—and besides, it’s so much trouble, 
and I’ve grown to be very fond of the Gate. It’s not 
much to look at. Not what it was in the old man’s 
time, but I couldn’t leave it. I’ve seen so many come 
in and out. And I’ve seen so many die here on the 
mats that I should be afraid of dying in the open now. 
I’ve seen some things that people would call strange 
enough ; but nothing is strange when you’re on the 
Black Smoke, except the Black Smoke. And if it was, 
it wouldn’t matter. Fung-Tching used to be very partic¬ 
ular about his people, and never got in any one who’d 
give trouble by dying messy and such. But the nephew 
isn’t half so careful. He tells everywhere that he keeps 
a ^‘first-chop ” house. Never tries to get men in quietly, 
and make them comfortable like Fung-Tching did. 
That’s why the Gate is getting a little bit more known 
than it used to be. Among the niggers of course. 
The nephew daren’t get a white, or, for matter of that, 
a mixed skin into the place. He has to keep us three 
of course—me and the Memsahib and the other Eurasian. 
We’re fixtures. But he wouldn’t give us credit for a 
pipeful—not for anything. 

One of these days, I hope, I shall die in the Gate. 
The Persian and the Madras man are terribly shaky 
now. They’ve got a boy to light their pipes for them. 
I always do that myself. Most like, I shall see them 
carried out before me. I don’t think I shall ever out¬ 
live the Memsahib or Tsin-ling. Women last longer 
than men at the Black-Smoke, and Tsin-ling has a deal 


244 GATE OF THE HUNDRED SORROWS. 

of the old man’s blood in him, though he does smoke 
cheap stuff. The bazar-woman knew when she was 
going two days before her time ; and she died on a 
clean mat with a nicely wadded pillow, and the old 
man hung up her pipe just above the Joss. He was 
always fond of her, I fancy. But he took her bangles 
just the same. 

I should like to die like the bazar-woman—on a clean, 
cool mat with a pipe of good stuff between my lips. 
When I feel I’m going, I shall ask Tsin-ling for them, 
and he can draw my sixty rupees a month, fresh and 
fresh, as long as he pleases. Then I shall lie back, quiet 
and comfortable, and watch the black and red dragons 
have their last big fight together ; and then .... 

Well, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters much to me 
—only I wish Tsin-ling wouldn’t put bran into the Black 
Smoke. 


THE MADNESS OF PRIVATE ORTHERIS. 


245 


THE MADNESS OF PRIVATE ORTHERIS. 


Oh ! Where would I be when my froat was dry ? 

Oh ! Where would I be when the bullets fly ? 

Oh ! Where would I be when I come to die ? 

Why, 

Somewheres anigh my chum. 

If ’e’s liquor ’e’ll give me some, 

If I’m dyin’ ’e’ll ’old my ’ead, 

An’ ’e’ll write ’em ’Ome when I’m dead.— 

Gawd send us a trusty chum! 

Barrack Room Ballad. 


My friends Mulvaney and Ortheris had gone on a 
shooting-expedition for one day. Learoyd was still in 
hospital, recovering from fever picked up in Burma. They 
sent me an invitation to join them, and were genuinely 
pained when I brought beer—almost enough beer to 
satisfy two Privates of the Line .... and Me. 

“ Twasn’t for that we bid you welkim, Sorr,” said 
Mulvaney sulkily. “’Twas for the pleasure av your 
comp’ny. ” 

Ortheris came to the rescue with :—Well, ’e won’t be 
none the worse for bringin’ liquor with’m. We ain’t a 
file o’ Dooks. We’re bloomin’ Tommies, ye cantankris 
Hirishman ; an ’ere’s your very good ’ealth ! ” 

We shot all the forenoon, and killed two pariah-dogs, 
four green parrots, sitting, one kite by the burning-ghaut, 
one snake flying, one mud-turtle, and eight crows. Game 
was plentiful. Then we sat down to tiffin—“bull-mate 
an’ bran-bread,” Mulvaney called it—by the side of the 
river, and took pot shots at the crocodiles in the intervals 
of cutting up the food with our only pocket-knife. Then 


246 the madness of private or the r is. 

w6 drank up all the beer, and threw the bottles into the 
water and fired at them. After that, we eased belts and 
stretched ourselves on the warm sand and smoked. We 
were too lazy to continue shooting. 

Ortheris heaved a big sigh, as he lay on his stomach 
with his head between his fists. Then he swore quietly 
into the blue sky. 

“Fwhat’s that for.?’’said Mulvaney. ^‘Have ye not 
drunk enough ? ” 

“Tott’nim Court Road, an’ a gal I fancied there. Wot’s 
the good of sodgerin ’.? ” 

“Orth’ris, me son,” said Mulvaney hastily, “’tis more 
than likely you’ve got throuble in your inside with the beer. 
I feel that way mesilf whin my liver gets rusty. ” 

Ortheris went on slowly, not heeding the interrup¬ 
tion :— 

I’m a Tommy—a bloomin’, eight-anna, dog-stealin’, 
Tommy, with a number instead of a decent name. Wot’s 
the good o’ me.? If I ’ad a stayed at ’Ome, I might a’ 
married that gal and a kep’ a’ little shorp in the ‘Am- 
mersmith ’ Igh.—‘S Orth’ris, Prac-ti-cal Taxi-der-mist.’ 
With a stuff’ fox, like they ’as in the Haylesbury Dairies, 
in the winder, an’ a little case of blue and yaller glass- 
heyes, an’ a little wife to call, ‘ shorp ! ’ ‘ shorp ! ’ when 
the door bell rung. As it his, I’m on’y a Tommy—a 
Bloomin’, Gawd-forsaken, Beer-swillin’, Tommy. ‘ Rest 
on your harms— 'versed. Stan’ at— hease; ’ Shun. ‘Verse 
— harms. Right an’lef’— tarrn. Slow— march. ’Alt— 
front. Rest on your harms— 'versed. With blank-cart¬ 
ridge— load'. An’ that’s the end o’ me.” He was quoting 
fragments from Funeral Parties’ Orders. 

“Stoput! shouted Mulvaney. “ Whin you’ve fired 
into nothin’ as often as me, over a better man than your- 
silf, you will not make a mock av thim orders. ’Tis 


THE MADNESS OF PRIVATE ORTHERIS. 


247 

worse than whistlin’ the Dead March in barricks. An’ 
you full as a tick, an’ the sun cool, an’ all an’ all! I take 
shame for you. You’re no better than a Pagin—you an’ 
your firin’-parties an’ your glass-eyes. Won’t you stop 
ut, Sorr ? ” 

What could I do ! Could I tell Ortheris anything that 
he did not know of the pleasures of his life.? I was not 
a Chaplain nor a Subaltern, and Ortheris had a right to 
speak as he thought fit. 

“Let him run, Mulvaney,” I said. “ It’s the beer.” 
“No! ’TisnH the beer,” said Mulvaney. “ I know 
fwhat’s cornin’. He’s tuk this way now an’ agin, an’ it’s 
bad—it’s bad—for I’m fond av the bhoy.” 

Indeed, Mulvaney seemed needlessly anxious ; but 1 
knew that he looked after Ortheris in a fatherly way. 

“ Let me talk, let me talk,” said Ortheris, dreamily. 
“ D’you stop your parrit screamin’ of a ’ot day, when the 
cage is a-cookin’ ’is pore little pink toes orf, Mulvaney 
“Pink toes ! D’ye mane to say you’ve pink toes 
under your bullswools, ye blandanderin,’”—Mulvaney 
gathered himself together for a terrific denunciation— 
“ school-misthress I Pink toes ! How much Bass wid 
the label did that ravin’ child dhrink ? ” 

“ Tain’t Bass,” said Ortheris. “It’s a bitterer beer 
«or that. It’s ’ome-sickness I ” 

“ Hark to him I An’ he’s goin’ Home in the Sherapis 
in the inside av four months ! ” 

“ I don’t care. It’s all one to me. ’Ow d’you know I 
ain’t ’fraid o’ dyin’ ’fore I gets my papers ? ” He recom¬ 
menced, in a sing-song voice, the Funeral Orders. 

I had never seen this side of Ortheris’s character before, 
but evidently Mulvaney had, and attached serious impor¬ 
tance to it. While Ortheris babbled, with his head on his 
arms, Mulvaney whispered to me : 


248 the madness of private or the r is. 

“He’s always tuk this way whin he’s been checked over¬ 
much by the childher they make Sarjints now-a-days. 
That ’an havin’ nothin’ to do. I can’t make ut out any¬ 
ways. ” 

“ Well, what does it matter ? Let him talk himself 
through.” 

Ortheris began singing a parody of “ The Ramrod 
Corps,” full of cheerful allusions to battle, murder and 
sudden death. He looked out across the river as he sang ; 
and his lace was quite strange to me. Mulvaney caught 
me by the elbow to ensure attention. 

“ Matther ? It matthers everything ! ’Tis some sort av 
fit that’s on him. I’ve seen ut. ’Twill hould him 
all this night, an’ in the middle av it, he’ll get out av his 
cot and go rakin’ in the rack for his ’coutrements. 
Thin he’ll come over to me an’ say :—‘ I’m goin’ to 
Bombay. Answer for me in the mornin’. ’ Thin me an’ 
him will fight as we’ve done before—him to go an’ me to 
hould him—an’ so we’ll both come on the books for dis¬ 
turbin’ in barricks. I’ve belted him, an’ I’ve bruk his 
head, an’ I’ve talked to him, but ’tis no manner av use 
whin the fit’s on him. He’s as good a bhoy as ever 
stepped whin his mind’s clear. I know fwhat’s cornin’, 
though, this night in barricks. Lord send he doesn’t 
loose off whin I rise for to knock him down. ’Tis thai 
that’s in my mind day an’ night.” 

This put the case in a much less pleasant light, and 
fully accounted for Mulvaney’s anxiety. He seemed to 
be trying to coax Ortheris out of the “fit”; for he 
shouted down the bank where the boy was lying :— 

“Listen now, you wid the ‘ pore pink toes’ an’ the glass 
eyes ! Did you shwim the Irriwaddy at night, behin’ me, 
as a bhoy shud; or were you hidin’ under a bed, as you 
was at Ahmed Kheyl ? ” 


THE MADNESS OF PRIVATE OR THE RTS. 


249 


This was at once a gross insult and a direct lie, and 
Mulvaney meant it to bring on a fight But Ortheris 
seemed shut up in some sort of trance. He answered 
slowly, without a sign of irritation, in the same cadenced 
voice as he had used for his firing-party orders :— 

swum the Irriwaddyin the night, 2isyou know, for 
to take the town of Lungtungpen, nakid an’ without fear. 
Hand where I was at Ahmed Kheyl you know, and four 
bloomin' Pathans know too. But that was summat to do, 
an' I didn’t think o’dyin.’ Now I'm sick to go'Ome—go- 
'Ome—go 'Ome ! No, I ain't mammy sick, because my 
uncle brungme up, but I’m sick for London again; sick for 
the sounds of'er; an'the sights of 'er, and the stinks of 'er ; 
orange-peel and hasphalte an' gas cornin’ in over Vaux'all 
Bridge. Sick for the rail goin’ down to Box 'Ill, with your 
gal on your knee an' a new clay pipe in your face. That, 
an' the Stran’ lights where you knows ev'ryone, an’ the 
Copper that takes you up is a old friend that tuk you up 
before, when you was a little, smitchy boy lying loose 
’tween the Temple an' the Dark Harches. No bloomin' 
guard-mountin', no bloomin' rotten-stone, nor khaki, an’ 
yourself your own master with a gal to take an' see the 
Humaners practisin' ahookin' dead corpses out of the 
Serpentine o’ Sundays. An’ I lef all that for to serve the 
Widder beyond the seas where there ain't no women 
and there ain't no liquor worth ’avin,’ and there ain’t 
nothin’ to see, nor do, nor say, nor feel, nor think. 
Lord love you, Stanley Orth’ris, but you’re a bigger 
bloomin’ fool than the rest o' the reg’ment and Mulvaney 
wired together ! There’s the Widder sittin’ at 'Ome with 
a gold crown'd on 'er 'ead ; and 'ere am Hi, Stanley Or- 
th'ris, the Widder's property, a rottin' fool ! ” 

His voice rose at the end of the sentence, and he 
wound up with a six-shot Anglo-Vernacular oath. Mub 


THE MADNESS OF PRIVATE ORTHERIS. 


250 

van ey said nothing’, but looked at me as if he expected 
that I could bring peace to poor Ortheris’s troubled brain. 

I remembered once at Rawal Pindi having seen a 
man, nearly mad with drink, sobered by being made 
a fool of. Some regiments may know what I mean. 

I hoped that we might shake off Ortheris in the same 
way, though he was perfectly sober : So I said :— 

“What’s the use of grousing there, and speaking 
against The Widow ? ” 

“I didn’t! ” said Ortheris. “S’elp me Gawd, I never 
said a word agin ’er, an’ I wouldn’t—not if I was to 
desert this minute ! ” 

Here was my opening. “Well, you meant to, any¬ 
how. What’s the use of cracking on for nothing ? 
Would you slip it now if you got the chance ? ” 

“ On’y try me ! ” said Ortheris, jumping to his feet as 
if he had been stung. 

Mulvaney jumped too. “Fwhat are you going to 
do ? ” said he. 

“ Help Ortheris down to Bombay or Karachi, which¬ 
ever he likes. You can report that he separated from 
you before tiffin, and left his gun on the bank here ! ” 

“I’m to report that—am I?” said Mulvaney, slowly. 
“Very well. If Orth’ris manes to desert now, and will 
desert now, an’ you, Sorr, who have been a friend to 
me an’ to him, will help him to ut, I, Terence Mulvaney, 
on my oath which I’ve never bruk yet, will report as 

you say. But”-here he stepped up to Ortheris, 

and shook the stock of the fowling-piece in his face— 
“your fistes help you, Stanley Orth’ris, if ever I come 
across you agin ! ” 

“I don’t care!’’ said Ortheris. “I’m sick o’ this 
dorg’s life. Give me a chanst. Don’t play with me 
Le’ me go ! ” 


THE MADNESS OF PRIVATE OR THE RIS. 


251 

Strip/’said I, “and change with me, and then I’ll 
tell you what to do.” 

I hoped that the absurdity of this would check 
Ortheris ; but he had kicked off his ammunition-boots 
and got rid of his tunic almost before I had loosed 
my shirt-collar. Mulvaney gripped me by the arm :— 

“The fit’s on him : the fit’s workin’ on him still. By 
my Honour and Sowl, we shall be accessiry to a desar- 
tion yet; only twenty-eight days, as you say, Sorr, or fifty- 
six, but think o’ the shame—the black shame to him an’ 
me ! ” I had never seen Mulvaney so excited. 

But Ortheris was quite calm, and, as soon as he had 
exchanged clothes with me, and I stood up a Private of 
the Line, he said shortly:—“Now! Come on. What 
nex’? D’ye mean fair. What must I do to get out 0’ 
this ’ere a Hell ? ” 

I told him that, if he would wait for two or three 
hours near the river, I would ride into the Station and 
come back with one hundred’ rupees. He would, with 
that money in his pocket, walk to the nearest side-sta¬ 
tion on the line, about five miles away, and would there 
take a first-class ticket for Karachi. Knowing that he 
had no money on him when he went out shooting, his 
regiment would not immediately wire to the sea-ports, 
but would hunt for him in the native villages near the 
river. Further, no one would think of seeking a de¬ 
serter in a first-class carriage. At Karachi, he was to buy 
white clothes and ship, if he could, on a cargo-steamer. 

Here he broke in. If I helped him to Karachi, he 
would arrange all the rest. Then I ordered him to wait 
where he was until it was dark enough for me to ride into 
the station without my dress being noticed. Now God 
in His wisdom has made the heart of the British Soldier, 
who is very often an unlicked ruffian, as soft as the heart 


THE MADNESS OF PRIVATE ORTHERIS. 


252 

of a Ijttle child, in order that he may believe in and follow 
his officers into tight and nasty places. He does not so 
readily come to believe in a “ civilian” but, when he does, 
he believes implicitly and like a dog. I had had the 
honor of the friendship of Private Ortheris, at intervals, 
for more than three years, and we had dealt with each other 
as man by man. Consequently, he considered that all 
my words were true, and not spoken lightly. 

Mulvaney and I left him in the high grass near the 
river-bank, and went away, still keeping to the high grass, 
towards my horse. The shirt scratched me horribly. 

We waited nearly two hours for the dusk to fall and 
allow me to ride off. We spoke of Ortheris in whispers, 
and strained our ears to catch any sound from the spot 
where we had left him. But we heard nothing except the 
wind in the plume-grass. 

Pve bruk his head,” said Mulvaney, earnestly, “ time 
an’ agin. I’ve nearly kilt him wid the belt, 2.\\ yet I can’t 
knock thim fits out ov his soft head. No ! An’ he’s not soft, 
for he’s reasonable an’ likely by natur.’ Fwhat is ut.? Is 
ut his breedin’ which is nothin’, or his edukashin which 
he niver got.? You that think ye know things, answer 
me that.” 

But I found no answer. I was wondering how long 
Ortheris, in the bank of the river, would hold out, and 
whether I should be forced to help him to desert, as I had 
given my word. 

Just as the dusk shut down and, with a very heavy heart, 
I was beginning to saddle up my horse, we heard wild 
shouts from the river. 

The devils had departed from Private Stanley Ortheris^ 
No. 22639, Company. The loneliness, the dusk, and 
the waiting had driven them out as I had hoped. We set 
off the double at and found him plunging about wildly 


THE MADNESS OF PRIVATE ORTHERIS. 


253 

through the grass, with his coat off—my coat off, I mean. 
He was calling for us like a madman. 

When we reached him, he was dripping with perspira¬ 
tion, and trembling like a startled horse. We had great 
difficulty in soothing him. He complained that he was 
in civilian kit, and wanted to tear my clothes off his body. 
I ordered him to strip, and we made a second exchange 
as quickly as possible. 

The rasp of his own ‘‘ grayback” shirt and the squeak 
of his boots seemed to bring him to himself. He put his 
hands before his eyes and said :— 

“Wot was it? I ’aint mad, I ain’t sunstrook, an’ I’ve bin 

an’ gone an’ said, an’ bin an’ gone an’ done. Wol 

'ave I bin an’ done ! ” 

“ Fwhat have you done?” said Mulvaney. “You’ve 
dishgraced yourself—though that’s no matter. You’ve 
dishgraced B. Comp’ny, an’ worst av all, you’ve dish- 
graced Mel Me that taught you how for to walk abroad 
like a man —whin you was a dhirty little, fish-backed 
little, whimperin’ little recruity. As you are now, Stanley 
Orth’ris ! ” 

Ortheris said nothing for a while. Then he unslung 
his belt, heavy with the badges of half-a-dozen regiments 
that his own had lain with, and handed it over to Mul¬ 
vaney. 

“I’m loo little for to mill you, Mulvaney,” said he, 
“an’ you’ve strook me before; but you can take an’ cut 
me in two with this ere if you like. ” 

Mulvaney turned to me. 

“ Lave me talk to him, Sorr,” said Mulvaney. 

I left, and on my way home thought a good deal over 
Ortheris in particular, and my friend. Private Thomas 
Atkins, whom I love, in general. 

But I could not come to any conclusion of any kind 
whatever. 



^54 


THE STORY OF MUHAMMD DIN, 


THE STORY OF MUHAMMAD DIN. 

“ Who is the happy man ? He that sees in his own house at home 
little children crown with dust, leaping and falling and crying.” 

Munichandra^ translated by Professor Peterson. 

The polo-ball was an old one, scarred, chipped, and 
dinted. It stood on the mantlepiece among the pipe- 
stems which Imam Din, khitmalgar, was cleaning for 
me. 

“Does the Heaven-born want this ball.?'’said Imam 
Din deferentially.” 

The Heaven-born set no particular store by it; but of ' 
what use was a polo-ball to a khitmatgarP 

“By Your Honor's favor, I have a little son. He has 
seen this ball, and desires it to play with. I do not want 
it for myself.” 

No one would for an instant accuse portly old Imam 
Din of wanting to play with polo-balls. He carried out 
the battered thing into the verandah ; and there followed a 
hurricane of joyful squeaks, a patter of small feet, and 
the thud-thud-thud of the ball rolling along the ground. 
Evidently the little son had been waiting outside the door 
to secure his treasure. But how had he managed to see 
that polo-ball ? 

Next day, coming back from office half an hour earlier 
than usual, I was aware of a small figure in the 
dining-room—a tiny, plump figure in a ridiculously in¬ 
adequate shirt which came, perhaps, half-way down the 
tubby stomach. It wandered round the room, thumb in 


THE STORY OF MUHAMMAD DIN. 


*55 

mouth, crooning to itself as it took stock of the pictures. 
Undoubtedly this was the “ little son.” 

He had no business in my room, of course; but was 
so deeply absorbed in his discoveries that he never noticed 
me in the doorway. I stepped into the room and startled 
him nearly into a fit. He sat down on the ground with a 
gasp. His eyes opened, and his mouth followed suit. I 
knew what was coming, and fled, followed by a long, 
dry howl which reached the servants’ quarters far more 
quickly than any command of mine had ever done. In 
ten seconds Imam Din was in the dining-room. Then 
despairing sobs arose, and I returned to find Imam Din 
admonishing the small sinner who was using most of his 
shirt as a handkerchief. 

“This boy,^’ said Imam Din, judicially,” is a budmash, 
a big budmash. He will, without doubt, go to the jaiF 
khana for his behavior. ” Renewed yells from the penitent, 
and an elaborate apology to myself from Imam Din. 

“Tell the baby,” said I, “that the Sahib is not angry, 
and take him away.” Imam Din conveyed my forgive¬ 
ness to the offender, who had now gathered all his shirt 
round his neck, stringwise, and the yell subsided into a 
sob. The two set off for the door. “ His name,” said 
Imam Din, as though the name were part of the crime, 
“ is Muhammad Din, and he is a budmashi* Freed from 
present danger, Muhammad Din turned round, in his 
father’s arms, and said gravely:—“It is true that my 
name is Muhammad Din, Tahib, but I am not a budmash. 
I am a man ! ” 

From that day dated my acquaintance with Muhammad 
Din. Never again did he come into my dining-room, 
but on the neutral ground of the compound, we greeted 
each other with much state, though our conversation was 
confined to Talaam, Tahib ” from his side, and Salamm^ 


THE STORY OF MUHAMMAD DIN, 


256 

Muhammad Din from mine. Daily on my return from 
office, the little white shirt, and the fat little body used to 
rise from the shade of the creeper-covered trellis where 
they had been hid; and daily I checked my horse here, 
that my salutation might not be slurred over or given 
unseemly. 

Muhammad Din never had any companions. He used 
to trot about the compound, in and out of the castor-oil 
bushes, on mysterious errands of his own. One day I 
stumbled upon some of his handiwork far down the ground. 
He had half buried the polo-ball in dust, and stuck six 
shrivelled old marigold flowers in a circle round it. Out¬ 
side that circle again, was a rude square, traced out in 
bits of red brick alternating with fragments of broken 
china ; the whole bounded by a little bank of dust. The 
bhistie from the well-curb put in a plea for the small 
architect, saying that it was only the play of a baby and 
did not much disfigure my garden. 

Heaven knows that I had no intention of touching 
the child’s work then or later; but, that evening, a 
stroll through the garden brought me unawares full 
on it ; so that I trampled, before I knew, marigold- 
heads, dust-bank, and fragments of broken soap-dish into 
confusion past all hope of mending. Next morning I 
came upon Muhammad Din crying softly to himself over 
the ruin I had wrought. Some one had cruelly told him 
that the Sahib was very angry with him for spoiling the 
garden, and had scattered his rubbish using bad language 
the while. Muhammad Din labored for an hour at effac¬ 
ing every trace of the dust-bank and pottery fragments, 
and it was with a tearful and apologetic face that he said, 
“ Talaam Tahib,'" when I came home from the office. A 
hasty inquiry resulted in Imam Din informing Muham¬ 
mad Din that by my singular favor he was permitted to 


THE STORY OR MUJTAMMAD DIM, 


25r 

disport himself as he pleased. Whereat the child took 
heart and fell to tracing the ground-plan of an edifice 
which was to eclipse the marigold-polo-ball creation. 

For some months, the chubby little eccentricity re¬ 
volved in his humble orbit among the castor-oil bushes 
and in the dust ; always fashioning magnificent palaces 
from stale flowers thrown away by the bearer, smooth 
water-worn pebbles, bits of broken glass, and feathers 
pulled, I fancy, from my fowls-always alone and al¬ 

ways crooning to himself. 

A gayly-spotted sea-shell was dropped one day close to 
the last of his little buildings ; and I looked thatMuham 
mad Din should build something more than ordinarily 
splendid on the strength of it. Nor was I disappointed. 
He meditated for the better part of an hour, and his croon¬ 
ing rose to a jubilant song. Then he began tracing in 
dust. It would certainly be a wondrous palace, this one, 
for it was two yards long and a yard broad in ground- 
plan. But the palace was never completed. 

Next day there was no Muhammad Din at the head of 
the carriage-drive, and no Talaam Tahib ” io welcome 
my return. I had grown accustomed to the greeting, 
and its omission troubled me. Next day. Imam Din 
told me that the child was suffering slightly from fever 
and needed quinine. He got the medicine, and an Eng¬ 
lish Doctor. 

“They have no stamina, these brats,” said the Doctor, 
as he left Imam Din’s quarters. 

A week later, though I would have given much to 
have avoided it, I met on the road to the Mussalman 
burying-ground Imam Din, accompanied by one other 
friend, carying in his arms, wrapped in a white cloth, all 
that was left of little Muhammad Din. 


17 


ON THE STRENG2H OF A LUCE NESS, 


ON THE STRENGTH OF A LIKENESS. 


If 

you 


^our mirror be broken, look into still water ; but have a care thai 
lo not fall in. 

Hindu Proverb. 


Next to a requited attachment, one of the most con¬ 
venient things that a young man can carry about with 
him at the beginning of his career, is an unrequited 
attachment. It makes him feel important and business¬ 
like, and blase, and cynical; and whenever he has a touch 
of liver, or suffers from want of exercise, he can mourn 
over his lost love, and be very happy in a tender, twilight 
fashion. 

Hannasyde’s affair of the heart had been a Godsend to 
him. It was four years old, and the girl had long since 
given up thinking of it. She had married and had many 
cares of her own. In the beginning, she had told Hanna- 
syde that, “while she could never be anything more than 
a sister to him, she would always take the deepest inter¬ 
est in his welfare.” This startlingly new and original 
remark gave^Hannasyde something to think over for two 
years; and his own vanity filled in the other twenty-four 
months. Hannasyde was quite different from Phil Gar- 
ron, but, none the less, had several points in common 
with that far too lucky man. 

He kept his unrequited attachment by him as men 
keep a well-smoked pipe—for comfort’s sake, and because 
it had grown dear in the using. It brought him happily 


ON THE STRENGTH OF A LIKENESS. 


259 

through the Simla season. Hannasyde was not lovely. 
There was a crudity in his manners, and a roughness in 
the way in which he helped a lady on to her horse, that 
did not attract the other sex to him. Even if he had cast 
about for their favor, which he did not. He kept his 
wounded heart all to himself for a while. 

Then trouble came to him. All who go to Simla, know 
the slope from the Telegraph to the Public Works Office. 
Hannasyde was loafing up the hill, one September morn¬ 
ing between calling hours, when a ’rickshaw came 
down in a hurry, and in the Vickshaw sat the living, 
breathing image of the girl who had made him so 
happily unhappy. Hannasyde leaned against the rail¬ 
ings and gasped. He wanted to run down-hill after 
the ’rickshaw, but that was impossible ; so he went 
forward with most of his blood in his temples. It was 
impossible, for many reasons, that the woman in the’rick¬ 
shaw could be the girl he had known. She was, he dis¬ 
covered later, the wife of a man from Dindigul, or Coimba¬ 
tore, or some out-of-the-way place, and she had come up to 
Simla early in the season for the good of her health. She 
was going back to Dindigul, or wherever it was, at the end 
of the season ; and in all likelihood would never return to 
Simla again, her proper Hill-station being Ootacamund. 
That night, Hannasyde, raw and savage from the raking up 
of all old feelings, took counsel with himself for one meas¬ 
ured hour. What he decided upon was this ; and you 
must decide for yourself how much genuine affection for 
the old Love, and how much a very natural inclination to 
go abroad and enjoy himself, affected the decision. Mrs. 
Landys-Haggert would never in all human likelihood 
cross his path again. So whatever he did didn’t much 
matter. She was marvellously like the girl who “ took a 
deep interest” and the rest of the formula. All things 


26 o 


ON THE STRENGTU OE A LIKENESS. 


considered, it would be pleasant to make the acquaintance 
of Mrs. Landys-Haggert, and for a little time—only a very 
little time—to make believe that he was with Alice Chisane 
again. Every one is more or less mad on one point. 
Hannasyde’s particular monomania was his old love, 
Alice Chisane. 

He made it his business to get introduced to Mrs. 
Haggert, and the introduction prospered. He also made 
it his business to see as much as he could of that lady. 
When a man is in earnest as to interviews, the facilities 
which Simla offers are startling. There are garden- 
parties, and tennis-parties, and picnics, and luncheons at 
Annandale, and rifle-matches, and dinners and balls ; 
besides rides and walks, which are matters of private 
arrangement. Hannasyde had started with the intention 
of seeing a likeness, and he ended by doing much more. 
He wanted to be deceived, he meant to be deceived, and 
he deceived himself very thoroughly. Not only were the 
face and figure, the face and figure of Alice Chisane, but 
the voice and lower tones were exactly the same, and so 
were the turns of speech ; and the little mannerisms, that 
every woman has, of gait and gesticulation, were abso¬ 
lutely and identically the same. The turn of the head 
was the same ; the tired look in the eyes at the end of a 
long walk was the same ; the stoop and wrench over the 
saddle to hold in a pulling horse was the same ; and once, 
most marvellous of all, Mrs. Landys-Haggert singing to 
herself in the next room, while Hannasyde was waiting 
to take her for a ride, hummed, note for note, with a 
throaty quiver of the voice in the second line :—Poor 
Wa?idermg One!" exactly as Alice Chisane had hummed 
it for Hannasyde in the dusk of an English drawing-room. 
In the actual woman herself—in the soul of her—there 
was not the least likeness ; she and Alice Chisane being 


ON THE STRENGTH OF A LIKENESS. 261 

cast in different moulds. But all that Hannasyde wanted 
to know and see and think about, was this maddening 
and perplexing likeness of face and voice and manner. 
He was bent on making a fool of himself that way ; and 
he was in no sort disappointed. 

Open and obvious devotion from any sort of man is 
always pleasant to any sort of woman ; but Mrs. Landys- 
Maggert, being a woman of the world, could make 
nothing of Hannasyde's admiration. 

He would take any amount of trouble—he was a 
selfish man habitually—to meet and forestall, if pos¬ 
sible, her wishes. Anything she told him to do was 
law ; and he was, there could be no doubting it, fond of 
her company so long as she talked to him, and kept 
on talking about trivialities. But when she launched 
into expression of her personal views and her wrongs, 
those small social differences that make the spice of 
Simla life Hannasyde was neither pleased nor interested. 
He didn’t want to know anything about Mrs. Landys- 
Haggert, or her experiences in the past—She had travelled 
nearly all over the world, and could talk cleverly—he 
wanted the likeness of Alice Chisane before his eyes and 
her voice in his ears. Anything outside that, reminding 
him of another personality jarred, and he showed that it 
did. 

Under the new Post Office, one evening, Mrs. Landys- 
Haggert turned on him, and spoke her mind shortly and 
without warning. Mr. Hannasyde,” said she, “ will 
you be good enough to explain why you have appointed 
yourself my special cavalier servenle ? I don’t understand 
it. But I am perfectly certain, somehow or other, that you 
don’t care the least little bit in the world for me” This 
seems to support, by the way, the theory that no man 
can act or tell lies to a woman without being found out. 


262 ON THE STRENGTH OF A LIKENESS. 

Hannasyde was taken off his guard. His defence never 
was a strong one, because he was always thinking of 
himself, and he blurted out, before he knew what he was 
saying, this inexpedient answer :—No more I do." 

The queerness of the situation and the reply, made 
Mrs. Landys-Haggert laugh. Then it all came out; and 
at the end of Hannasyde’s lucid explanation, Mrs. Haggert 
said, with the least little touch of scorn in her voice :— 
So I’m to act as the lay-figure for you to hang the rags 
of your tattered affections on, am I ? ” 

Hannasyde didn’t see what answer was required, and 
he devoted himself generally and vaguely to the praise of 
Alice Chisane, which was unsatisfactory. Now it is to 
be thoroughly made clear that Mrs. Haggert had not the 
shadow of a ghost of an interest in Hannasyde. Only 
. . . . only no woman likes being made love through 

instead of to-specially on behalf of a musty divinity of 

four years’ standing. 

Hannasyde did not see that he had made any very 
particular exhibition of himself. He was glad to find a 
sympathetic soul in the arid wastes of Simla. 

When the season ended, Hannasyde went down to his 
own place and Mrs. Haggert to hers. “ It was like 
making love to a ghost,” said Hannasyde to himself, 
“ and it doesn’t matter ; and now I’ll get to my work.' 
But he found himself thinking steadily of the Haggert- 
Chisane ghost; and he could not be certain whether it 
was Haggert or Chisane that made up the greater part of 
the pretty phantom. 


He got understanding a month later. 

A peculiar point of this peculiar country is the way in 
which a heartless Government transfers men from one end 
of the Empire to the other. You can never be sure of 



ON THE STRENGTH OF A LIKENESS. 263 

getting rid of a friend or an enemy till he or she dies. 
There was a case once—but that’s another story. 

Haggert’s Department ordered him up from Dindigul to 
the Frontier at two days’ notice, and he went through, 
losing money at every step, from Dindigul to his station. 
He dropped Mrs. Flaggert at Lucknow, to stay with some 
friends there, to take part in a big ball at the Chutter 
Munzil, and to come on when he had made the new 
home a little comfortable. Lucknow was Hannasyde’s 
station, and Mrs. Haggert stayed a week there. Han- 
nasyde went to meet her. And the train came in, he dis¬ 
covered which he had been thinking of for the past 
month. The unwisdom of his conduct also struck him. 
The Lucknow week, with two dances, and an unlimited 
quantity of rides together, clinched matters ; and Han- 
nasyde found himself pacing this circle of thought:— 
He adored Alice Chisane—at least he had adored her 
And he admired Mrs. Landys-Haggert because she was 
like Alice Chisane. But Mrs. Landys-Haggert was not 
in the least like Alice Chisane, being a thousand times 
more adorable. Now Alice Chisane was “the bride of 
another,” and so was Mrs. Landys-Haggert, and a good 
and honest wife too. Thereforey he, Hannasyde, was 
. . . . . here he called himself several hard names, and 
wished that he had been wise in the beginning. 

Whether Mrs. Landys-Haggert saw what was going on 
in his mind, she alone knows. He seemed to take an 
unqualified interest in everything connected with her 
self, as distinguished from the Alice-Chisane likeness 
and he said one or two things which, if Alice Chisane 
had been still betrothed to him, could scarcely have been 
excused, even on the grounds of the likeness. But Mrs. 
Haggert turned the remarks aside, and spent a long 
time in making Hannasyde see what a comfort and 


>64 ON THE STRENGTH OF A LIKENESS. 

a pleasure she had been to him because of her strange 
resemblance to his old love. Hannasyde groaned in 
his saddle and said, *‘Yes, indeed,” and busied himself 
with preparations for her departure to the Frontier, feel¬ 
ing very small and miserable. 

The last day of her stay at Lucknow came, and Han¬ 
nasyde saw her off at the Railway Station. She was very 
grateful for his kindness and the trouble he had taken, 
and smiled pleasantly and sympathetically as one who 
knew the Alice-Chisane reason of that kindness. And 
Hannasyde abused the coolies with the luggage, and 
hustled the people on the platform, and prayed that the 
roof might fall in and slay him. 

As the train went out slowly, Mrs. Landys-Haggert 
leaned out of the window to say good-bye :—On second 
thoughts au revoir, Mr. Hannasyde. I go Home in the 
Spring, and perhaps I may meet you in Town.’’ 

Hannasyde shook hands, and said very earnestly and 
adoringly :—I hope to Heaven I shall never see your 
face again ? ’’ 

And Mrs. Haggert understood. 


WRESSLEY ON THE FOREIGN OFFICE. 


< 


WRESSLEY OF THE FOREIGN OFFICE. 

I closed and drew for my love’s sake, 

That now is false to me, 

And I slew the Riever of Tarrant Moss, 

And set Dumeny free. 

And ever they give me praise and gold, 

And ever I moan my loss, 

For I struck the blow for my false love’s sake, 

And not for the men at the Moss. 

Tarrant Moss. 

One of the many curses of our life out here is the 
want of atmosphere in the painter’s sense. There are 
no half-tints worth noticing. Men stand out all crude 
and raw, with nothing to tone them down, and nothing 
to scale them against. They do their work, and grow 
to think that there is nothing but their work, and 
nothing like their work, and that they are the real pivots 
on which the administration turns. Here is an instance 
of this feeling. A half-caste clerk was ruling forms 
in a Pay Office. He said to me:—‘'Do you know 
what would happen if I added or took away one single 
line on this sheet } ” Then, with the air of a conspirator : 
—“It would disorganize the whole of the Treasury 
payments throughout the whole of the Presidency Circle ! 
Think of that ? ” 

If men had not this delusion as to the ultra-importance 
of their own particular employments, I suppose that they 
would sit down and kill themselves. But their weaki\ess 


266 WRESSLEV ON THE FOREIGN OFFICE. 

is wearisome, particularly when the listener knows that 
he himself commits exactly the same sin. 

Even the Secretariat believes that it does good when 
it asks an over-driven Executive Officer to take a census 
of wheat-weevils through a district of five thousand 
square miles. 

There was a man once in the Foreign Office—a man 
who had grown middle-aged in the department, and was 
commonly said, by irreverent juniors, to be able to repeat 
Aitchison’s Treaties and ” backwards, in his 

sleep. What he did with his stored knowledge only the 
Secretary knew ; and he, naturally, would not publish 
the news abroad. This man’s name was Wressley, and 
it was the Shibboleth, in those days, to say :—“Wress¬ 
ley knows more about the Central Indian States than any 
living man.” If you did not say this, you were consid¬ 
ered one of mean understanding. 

Now-a-days, the man who says that he knows the ravel 
of the inter-tribal complications across the Border is of 
more use; but in Wressley’s time, much attention was 
paid to the Central Indian States. They were called 
“ foci ” and “ factors,” and all manner of imposing names. 

And here the curse of Anglo-Indian life fell heavily. 
When Wressley lifted up his voice, and spoke about 
such-and-such a succession to such-and-such a throne, 
the Foreign Office were silent, and Heads of Depart¬ 
ments repeated the last two or three words of Wressley’s 
sentences, and tacked “ yes, yes,” on to them, and knew 
that they were “assisting the Empire to grapple with 
serious political contingencies.” In most big undertak¬ 
ings, one or two men do the work while the rest sit near 
and talk till the ripe decorations begin to fall. 

Wressley was the working-member of the Foreign 
Office firm, and, to keep him up to his duties when he 


WHESSLEV ON THE FOREIGN OFFICE. 267 

showed signs of flagging, he was made much of by his 
superiors and told what a fine fellow he was. He did 
not require coaxing, because he was of tough build, but 
what he received confirmed him in the belief that there 
was no one quite so absolutely and imperatively neces¬ 
sary to the stability of India as Wressley of the Foreign 
Office. There might be other good men, but the known, 
honored and trusted man among men was Wressley of 
the Foreign Office. We had a Viceroy in those days 
who knew exactly when to “gentle” a fractious big man, 
and to hearten up a collar-galled little one, and so keep 
all his team level. He conveyed to Wressley the im¬ 
pression which I have just set down ; and even tough 
men are apt to be disorganized by a Viceroy s praise. 
There was a case once-but that is another story. 

All India knew Wressley’s name and office—it was in 
Thacker and Spink’s Directory—but who he was person¬ 
ally, or what he did, or what his special merits were, 
not fifty men knew or cared. His work filled all his 
time, and he found no leisure to cultivate acquaintances 
beyond those of dead Rajput chiefs with Ahir blots in 
their scutcheons. Wressley would have made a very 
good Clerk in the Herald’s College had he not been a 
Bengal Civilian. 

Upon a day, between office and office, great trouble 
came to Wressley—overwhelmed him, knocked him 
down, and left him gasping as though he had been a 
little school-boy. Without reason, against prudence, and 
at a moment’s notice, he fell in love with a frivolous, 
golden-haired girl who used to tear about Simla Mall on 
a high, rough waler, with a blue velvet jockey-cap cram¬ 
med over her eyes. Her name was % enner—Tillie Ven- 
ner—and she was delightful. She took Wressley’s heart 
at a hand-gallop, and Wressley found that it was not 



268 IV/^ESSLEV ON THE FOREIGN OFFICE. 


^ood for man to live alone ; even with half the Foreign 
Office Records in his presses. 

Then Simla laughed, for Wressley in love was slightly 
ridiculous. He did his best to interest the girl in himself 
—that is to say, his work—-and she, after the manner ot 
women, did her best to appear interested in what, be¬ 
hind his back, she called “Mr. Wressly’s Wajahs” ; for 
she lisped very prettily. She did not understand one 
little thing about them, but she acted as if she did. Men 
have married on that sort of error before now. 

Providence, however, had care of Wressley. He 
was immensely struck with Miss Vernier’s intelligence. 
He would have been more impressed had he heard 
her private and confidential accounts of his calls. He 
held peculiar notions as to the wooing of girls. He said 
that the best work of a man’s career should be laid rev¬ 
erently at their feet. Ruskin writes something like this 
somewhere, I think ; but in ordinary life a few kisses are 
better and save time. 

About a month after he had lost his heart to ]\Iiss 
Vernier, and had been doing his work vilely in conse¬ 
quence, the first idea of his Native Rule in Central India'’ 
struck Wressley and filled him with joy. It was, as he 
sketched it, a great thing—the work of his life—a really 
comprehensive survey of a most fascinating subject—to 
be written with all the special and laboriously acquired 
knowledge of Wressley of the Foreign Office—a gift fit for 
an Empress. 

He told Miss Vernier that he was going to take leave, 
and hoped, on his return, to bring her a present worthy 
of her acceptance. Would she wait? Certainly she would. 
Wressley drew seventeen hundred rupees a month. She 
would wait a year for that. Her Mamma would help her 
to wait. 



WRESSLEY ON THE FOREIGN OEEICE. 369 

So Wressley took one year’s leave and all the available 
documents, about a truck-load, that he could lay hands 
on, and went down to Central India with his notion hot 
in his head. He began his book in the land he was writ¬ 
ing of. Too much official correspondence had made him 
a frigid workman, and he must have guessed that he 
needed the white light of local color on his palette. This 
is a dangerous paint for amateurs to play with. 

Heavens, how that man worked ! He caught his Rajahs, 
analyzed his Rajahs, and traced them up into the mists of 
Time and beyond, with their queens and their concubines. 
He dated and cross-dated, pedigreed and triple-pedigreed, 
compared, noted, connoted, wove, strung, sorted, selected, 
inferred, calendared and counter-calendared for ten hours 
a day. And, because this sudden and new light of Love 
was upon him, he turned those dry bones of history and 
dirty records of misdeeds into things to weep or to laugh 
over as he pleased. His heart and soul were at the end 
of his pen, and they got into the ink. He was dowered 
with sympathy, insight, humor and style for two hundred 
and thirty days and nights ; and his book was a Book. 
He had his vast special knowledge with him, so to speak ; 
but the spirit, the woven-in human Touch, the poetry and 
the power of the output, were beyond all special know¬ 
ledge. But I doubt whether he knew the gift that was in 
him then, and thus he may have lost some happiness. 
He was toiling for Tillie Venner, not for himself. Men 
often do their best work blind, for some one else’s sake. 

Also, though this has nothing to do with the story, in 
India where everyone knows every one else, you can 
watch men being driven, by the women who govern 
them, out of the rank-and-file and sent to take up points 
alone. A good man, once started, goes forward ; but an 
average man, so soon as the woman loses interest in hi* 


270 


WRESSLEY ON THE FOREIGN OFFICE, 


success as a tribute to her power, comes back to the bab 
talion and is no more heard of. 

Wressley bore the first copy of his book to Simla and, 
blushing and stammering, presented it to Miss Venner. 
She read a little of it. I give her review verbatim :—“ Oh, 
your book .? Ifs all about those how-wid Wajahs. I 
didn’t understand it.” 


Wresstey of the Foreign Office was broken, smashed,—I 
am not exaggerating—by this one frivolous little girl. All 
that he could say feebly was :—“But—but it’s my mag¬ 
num opus / The work of my life.” Miss Venner did not 
know what magnum opus meant ; but she knew that 
Captain Kerrington had won three races at the last Gym¬ 
khana. Wressley didn’t press her to wait for him any 
longer. He had sense enough for that. 

Then came the reaction after the year’s strain, and Wress¬ 
ley went back to the Foreign Office and his “Wajahs,” 
a compiling, gazetteering, report-writing hack, who would 
have been dear at three hundred rupees a month. He 
abided by Miss Vernier’s review. Which proves that the 
inspiration in the book was purely temporary and uncon¬ 
nected with himself. Nevertheless, he had no right to 
sink, in a hill-tarn, five packing-cases, brought up at 
enormous expense from Bombay, of the best book of In¬ 
dian history ever written. 

When he sold off before retiring, some years later, I 
was turning over his shelves, and came across the only 
existing copy of ‘^Native Rule in Central India 
copy that Miss Venner could not understand. I read 
it, sitting on his mule-trunks, as long as the light 
lasted, and offered him his own price for it He looked 
over my shoulder for a few pages and said to himself 
drearily ;— 



WRESSLEV ON THE FOREIGN OFFICE. 


271 

*‘Now, how in the world did I come to write such 
damned good stuff as that ? ” 

Then to me :— 

“ Take it and keep it. Write one of your penny-farth¬ 
ing yarns about its birth. Perhaps—perhaps—the whole 
business may have been ordained to that end.” 

Which, knowing what Wressley of the Foreign Office 
was once, struck me as about the bitterest thing that I 
had ever heard a man say of his own work. 


£y U^ORD dF Moum. 




BY WORD OF MOUTH. 

Not though you die to-night, O Sweet, and wail, 

A spectre at my door, 

Shall mortal Fear make Love immortal fail— 

I shall but love you more, 

Who, from Death’s house returning, give me still 
One moment’s comfort in my matchless ill. 

Shadow Houses. 

This tale may be explained by those who know how 
souls are made, and where the bounds of the Possible 
are put down. I have lived long enough in this country 
to know that it is best to know nothing, and can only 
write the story as it happened. 

Dumoise was our Civil Surgeon at Meridki, and we 
called him ‘‘Dormouse,” because he was a round little, 
sleepy little man. He was a good Doctor and never 
quarrelled with any one. not even with our Deputy Com¬ 
missioner, who had the manners of a bargee and the tact 
of a horse. He married a girl as round and as sleepy- 
looking as himself. She was a Miss Hillardyce, daugh¬ 
ter of “Squash” Hillardyce of the Berars, who married 
his Chiefs daughter by mistake. But that is another 
story. 

A honeymoon in India is seldom more than a week 
long ; but there is nothing to hinder a couple from ex¬ 
tending it over two or three years. This is a delightful 
country for married folk who are wrapped up in one 
another. They can live absolutely alone and without 
interruption—^just as the Dormice did. These two little 
people retired from the world after their marriage, and 


BV WORD OP MOUTH. 


m 

were very happy. They were forced, of course, to give 
occasional dinners, but they made no friends hereby, and 
the Station went its own way and forgot them ; only 
saying, occasionally, that Dormouse was the best of good 
fellows, though dull. A Civil Surgeon who msver quarrels 
is a rarety, appreciated as such. 

Few people can afford to play Robinson Crusoe any¬ 
where—least of all in India, where we are few in the 
land, and very much dependent on each others’ kind 
offices. Dumoise was wrong in shutting himself from 
the world for a year, and he discovered his mistake 
when an epidemic of typhoid broke out in the Station 
in the heart of the cold weather, and his wife went 
down. He was a shy little man, and five days were 
wasted before he realized that Mrs. Dumoise was burn¬ 
ing with something worse than simple fever, and three 
days more passed before he ventured to call on Mrs. 
Shute, the Engineer’s wife, and timidly speak about his 
trouble. Nearly every household in India knows that 
Doctors are very helpless in typhoid. The battle must 
be fought out between Death and the Nurses, minute by 
minute and degree by degree. Mrs. Shute almost boxed 
Dumoise’s ears for what she called his “criminal delay,” 
and went off at once to look after the poor girl. We 
had seven cases of typhoid in the Station that winter 
and, as the average of death is about one in every five 
cases, we felt certain that we should have to lose some¬ 
body. But all did their best. The women sat up nurs¬ 
ing the women, and the men turned to and tended the 
bachelors who were down, and we wrestled with those 
typhoid cases for fifty-six days, and brought them through 
the Valley of the Shadow in triumph. But, just when we 
thought all was over, and were going to give a dance to 
celebrate the victory, little Mrs. Dumoise got a relapse 


MY WORD OF MOUTH, 


274 

and died in a week and the Station went to the funeral. 
Dumoise broke down utterly at the brink of the grave, and 
had to be taken away. 

After the death, Dumoise crept into his own house and 
refused to be comforted. He did his duties perfectly, but 
we all felt that he should go on leave, and the other men 
of his own Service told him so. Dumoise was very thank¬ 
ful for the suggestion—he was thankful for anything in 
those days—and went to Chini on a walking-tour. Chini 
is some twenty marches from Simla, in the heart of the 
Hills, and the scenery is good if you are in trouble. You 
pass through big, still deodar-forests, and under big, still 
cliffs, and over big, still grass-downs swelling like a 
woman’s breasts ; and the wind across the grass, and the 
rain among the deodars says:—“Hush—hush—hush.” 
So little Dumoise was packed off to Chini, to wear down 
his grief with a full-plate camera, and a rifle. He took 
also a useless bearer, because the man had been his wife’s 
favorite servant. He was idle and a thief, but Dumoise 
trusted everything to him. 

On his way back from Chini, Dumoise turned aside to 
Bagi, through the Forest Reserve which is on the spur of 
Mount Huttoo. Some men who have travelled more than 
a little say that the march from Kotegarh to Bagi is one 
of the finest in creation. It runs through dark wet forest, 
and ends suddenly in bleak, nipped hill-side and black 
rocks. Bagi dak-bungalow is open to all the winds and 
is bitterly cold. Few people go to Bagi. Perhaps that 
was the reason why Dumoise went there. He halted at 
seven in the evening, and his bearer went down the hill¬ 
side to the village to engage coolies for the next day^s 
march. The sun had set, and the night-winds were begin¬ 
ning to croon among the rocks. Dumoise leaned on the 
railing of the verandah, waiting for his bearer to return. 


B y IVOBB OF MOUTH. 


27S 

The man came back almost immediately after he had dis¬ 
appeared, and at such a rate that Dumoise fancied he 
must have crossed a bear. He was running as hard as he 
could up the face of the hill 

But there was no bear to account for his terror. He 
raced to the verandah and fell down, the blood spurting 
from his nose and his face iron-gray. Then he gurgled ; 
— “I have seen Wxe Alemsahib/ I have seen the Tl/rw- 
sahib! ” 

“Where.?said Dumoise. 

“Down there, walking on the road to the village. She 
was in a blue dress, and she lifted the veil of her bonnet 
and said:—‘Ram Dass, give my salaams to the Sahib, 
and tell him that I shall meet him next month at Nuddea.' 
Then I ran away, because I was afraid.” 

What Dumoise said or did I do not know. Ram Dass 
declares that he said nothing, but walked up and down 
the verandah all the cold night, waiting for the Memsahib 
to come up the hill and stretching out his arms into the 
dark like a madman. But no Memsahib came, and, next 
day, he went on to Simla cross-questioning the bearer 
every hour. 

Ram Dass could only say that he had met Mrs. Dumoise 
and that she had lifted up her veil and given him the 
message which he had faithfully repeated to Dumoise. 
To this statement Ram Dass adhered. He did not know 
where Nuddea was, had no friends at Nuddea, and would 
most certainly never go to Nuddea ; even though his pay 
were doubled. 

Nuddea is in Bengal, and has nothing whatever to do 
with a Doctor serving in the Punjab. It must be more 
than twelve hundred miles from Meridki. 

Dumoise went through Simla without halting, and re¬ 
turned to Meridki there to take over charge from the 


BY IVORB OF MOUTH, 


276 

man who had been officiating for him during his tour. 
There were some Dispensary accounts to be explained, 
and some recent orders of the Surgeon-General to be 
noted, and, altogether, the taking-over was a full day's 
work. In the evening, Dumoise told his locum tenens, 
who was an old friend of his bachelor days, what had 
happened at Bagi; and the man said that Ram Dass 
might as well have chosen Tuticorin while he was about 
it. 

At that moment, a telegraph-peon came in with a tele¬ 
gram from Simla, ordering Dumoise not to take over 
charge at Meridki, but to go at once to Nuddea on special 
duty. There was a nasty outbreak of cholera at Nuddea, 
and the Bengal Government, being shorthanded, as usual, 
had borrowed a Surgeon from the Punjab. 

Dumoise threw the telegram across the table and 
said“Well?" 

The other Doctor said nothing. It was all that he 
could say. 

Then he remembered that Dumoise had passed through 
Simla on his way from Bagi ; and thus might, possibly, 
have heard first news of the impending transfer. 

He tried to put the question, and he implied suspicion 
into words, but Dumoise stopped him with :—“ If I had 
desired that, I should never have come back from Chini. 
I was shooting there. I wish to live, for I have things to 
do ... . but I shall not be sorry." 

The other man bowed his head, and helped, in the twi¬ 
light, to pack up Dumoise’s just opened trunks. Ram 
Dass entered with the lamps. 

“Where is the Sahib going? " he asked. 

“To Nuddea," said Dumoise softly. 

Ram Dass clawed Dumoise’s knees and boots and 
begged him not to go. Ram Dass wept and howled till 


BY WORD OF MOUTH. 


277 


he was turned out of the room. Then he wrapped up all 
his belongings and came back to ask for a character. 
He was not going to Nuddea to see his Sahih die, and, 
perhaps to die himself. 

So Dumoise gave the man his wages and went down 
to Nuddea alone ; the other Doctor bidding him good-bye 
as one under sentence of death. 

Eleven days later, he had joined his Memsahib; and 
the Bengal Government had to borrow a fresh Doctor to 
cope with that epidemic at Nuddea. The first importation 
lay dead in Chooadanga Dak-Bungalow. 


TO BE FILED FOR REFERENCE. 


278 


TO BE FILED FOR REFERENCE. 

By the hoof of the Wild Goat up-tossed 
From the Cliff where She lay in the Sun, 

Fell the Stone 

To the Tarn where the daylight is lost; 

So She fell from the light of the Sun, 

And alone. 

Now the fall vas ordained from the first, 

With the Goat and the Cliff and the Tam, 

But the Stone 

Knows only Her life is accursed, 

As She sinks in the depths of the Tarn, 

And alone. 

Oh, Thou who hast builded the world 
Oh, Thou who hast lighted the Sun ! 

Oh, Thou who hast darkened the Tarn I 
Judge Thou 

The sin of the Stone that was hurled 
By the Goat from the light of the Sun, 

As She sinks in the mire of the Tarn, 

Even now—even now—even now ! 

From the Unpublished Papers of McIntosh Jellaludin. 

** Say is it dawn, is it dusk in thy Bower, 

Thou whom I long for, who longest for me ? 

Oh be it night—be it-” 

Here he fell over a little camel-colt that was sleeping 
in the Serai where the horse-traders and the best of the 
blackguards from Central Asia live ; and, because he 
was very drunk indeed and the night was dark, he could 
not rise again till I helped him. That was the begin¬ 
ning of my acquaintance with McIntosh Jellaludin. 
When a loafer, and drunk, sings The Song of the Bower, 
he must be worth cultivating. He got off the canieFs 



TO BE FILED FOR REFERENCE. 


279 


back and said, rather thickly :——I—I’m a bit screwed, 
but a dip in Loggerhead will put me right again ; and, I 
say, have you spoken to Symonds about the mare’s 
knees ? ” 

Now Loggerhead was six thousand weary miles away 
from us, close to Mesopotamia, where you mustn’t fish 
and poaching is impossible, and Charley Symonds’ stable 
a half mile further across the paddocks. It was strange 
to hear all the old names, on a May night, among the 
horses and camels of the Sultan Caravanserai. Then the 
man seemed to remember himself and sober down at the 
same time. He leaned against the camel and pointed 
to a corner of the Serai where a lamp was burning :— 

“ I live there,” said he, “and I should be extremely 
obliged if you would be good enough to help my mu¬ 
tinous feet thither ; for I am more than usually drunk— 
most—most phenomenally tight. But not in respect to 
my head. ‘ My brain cries out against ’— how does it 

go ? But my head rides on the-rolls on the dung-hill 

I should have said, and controls the qualm.” 

I helped him through the gangs of tethered horses and 
he collapsed on the edge of the verandah in front of the 
line of native quarters. 

“Thanks—a thousand thanks ! O Moon and little, 
little Stars ! To think that a man should so shameless¬ 
ly... . Infamous liquor, too. Ovid in exile drank no 
worse. Better. It was frozen. Alas ! I had no ice. 
Good-night. I would introduce you to my wife were I 
sober—or she civilized. ” 

A native woman came out of the darkness of the room, 
and began calling the man names ; so I went away. He 
was the most interesting loafer that I had had the pleas¬ 
ure of knowing for a long time ; and later on, he became 
ji friend of mine. He was a tall, well-built, fair man 



28 o 


TO BE FILED FOR REFERENCE, 


fearfully shaken with drink, and he looked nearer fifty 
than the thirty-five which, he said, was his real age. 
When a man begins to sink in India, and is not sent 
Home by his friends as soon as may be, he falls very 
low from a respectable point of view. By the time that 
he changes his creed, as did McIntosh, he is past re¬ 
demption. 

In most big cities, natives will tell you of two or three 
Sahibs, generally low-caste, who have turned Hindu or 
Mussulman, and who live more or less as such. But it is 
not often that you can get to know them. As McIntosh 
himself used to say :—“ If I change my religion for my 
stomach’s sake, I do not seek to become a martyr to 
missionaries, nor am I anxious for notoriety. ” 

At the outset of acquaintance McIntosh warned me . 
“Remember this. I am not an object for charity. I 
require neither your money, your food, nor your cast¬ 
off raiment. I am that rare animal, a self-supporting 
drunkard. It you choose, I will smoke with you, for 
the tobacco of the bazars does not, I admit, suit my 
palate ; and I will borrow any books which you may 
not specially value. It is more than likely that I shall 
sell them for bottles of excessively filthy country-liquors. 
In return, you shall share such hospitality as my house 
affords. Here is a charpoy on which two can sit, and 
it is possible that there may, from time to time, be food 
in that platter. Drink, unfoVtunately, you will find on 
the premises at any hour : and thus I make you wel¬ 
come to all my poor establishments.’’ 

I was admitted to the McIntosh household—I and 
my good tobacco. But nothing else. Unluckily, one 
cannot visit a loafer in the Serai by day. Friends buy¬ 
ing horses would not understand it. Consequently, I 
was obliged to see McIntosh after dark. He laughed 


TO BE FILED FOR REFERENCE. 281 

at this, and said simply You are perfectly right. 
When I enjoyed a position in society, rather higher 
then yours, I should have done exactly the same thing, 
Good Heavens ! I was once'’—he spoke as though he 
had fallen from the Command of a Regiment—“ an 
Oxford Man ! ” This accounted for the reference to 
Charley Symonds’ stable. 

“ You,” said McIntosh, slowly, “ have not had that 
advantage ; but, to outward appearance, you do not 
seem possessed of a craving for strong drinks. On the 
whole, I fancy that you are the luckier of the two. 
Yet I am not certain. You are—forgive my saying so 
even while I am smoking your excellent tobacco—pain¬ 
fully ignorant of many things.” 

We were sitting together on the euge of his bedstead, 
for he owned no chairs, watching the horses being 
watered for the night, while the native woman was 
preparing dinner. I did not like being patronized by a 
loafer, but I was his guest for the time being, though 
he owned only one very torn alpaca-coat and a pair of 
trousers made out of gunny-bags. He took the pipe 
out of his mouth, and went on judicially : — “ All things 
considered, I doubt whether you are the luckier. I do 
not refer to your extremely limited classical attain¬ 
ments, or your excruciating quantities, but to your 
gross ignorance of matters more immediately under 
your notice. That for instance.”—He pointed to a 
woman cleaning a samovar near the well in the centre 
of the Serai. She was flicking the water out of the 
spout in regular cadenced jerks. 

‘‘ There are ways and ways of cleaning samovars. 
If you knew why she was doing her work in that partic¬ 
ular fashion, you would know what the Spanish Monk 
meant when he said— 


2%2 


TO BE FILED FOR REFERENCE, 


‘ I the Trinity illustrate, 

Drinking watered orange-pulp— 

In three sips the Aryan frustrate, 

While he drains his at one gulp ’— 

and many other things which now are hidden from your 
eyes. However, Mrs. McIntosh has prepared dinner. 
Let us come and eat after the fashion of the people of 
the country—of whom, by the way, you know nothing.” 

The native woman dipped her hand in the dish with 
us. This was wrong. The wife should always wait 
until the husband has eaten. McIntosh Jellaludin 
apologized, saying :— 

“It is an English prejudice which I have not been 
able to overcome; and she loves me. Why I have never 
been able to understand. I foregathered with her at 
Jullundur, three years ago, and she has remained with 
me ever since. I believe her to be moral, and know her 
to be skilled in cookery.” 

He patted the woman’s head as he spoke, and she 
cooed softly. She was not pretty to look at. 

McIntosh never told me what position he had held 
before his fall. He was, when sober, a scholar and a 
gentleman. When drunk, he was rather more of the first 
than the second. He used to get drunk about once a 
week for two days. On those occasions the native wo¬ 
man tended him while he raved in all tongues except his 
own. One day, indeed, he began reciting Atalanta m 
Calydon, and went through it to the end, beating time to 
the swing of the verse with a bedstead-leg. But he did 
most of his ravings in Greek or German. The man’s 
mind was a perfect rag-bag of useless things. Once, 
when he was beginning to get sober, he told me that I 
was the only rational being in the Inferno into which he 
had descended—a Virgil in the Shades, he said—and that, 


TO BE FILED FOR REFERENCE. 


283 

in return for my tobacco, he would, before he died, give 
me the materials of a new Inferno that should make me 
greater than Dante. Then he fell asleep on a horse- 
blanket and woke up quite calm. 

“ Man,’’ said he, “when you have reached the utter¬ 
most depths of degradation, little incidents which would 
vex a higher life, are to you of no consequence. Last 
night, my soul was among the gods ; but I make no 
doubt that my bestial body was writhing down here in 
the garbage. ” 

“ You were abominably drunk if that’s what you 
mean,” I said. 

“ I was drunk—filthily drunk. I who am the son of a 
man with whom you have no concern—I who was once 
Fellow of a College whose buttery-hatch you have not 
seen. I was loathsomely drunk. But consider how 
lightly I am touched. It is nothing to me. Less than 
nothing ; for I do not even feel the headache which 
should be my portion. Now, in a higher life, how 
ghastly would have been my punishment, how bitter my 
repentance ! Believe me, my friend with the neglected 
education, the highest is as the lowest—always supposing 
each degree extreme.” 

He turned round on the blanket, put his head between 
his fists and continued :— 

“On the Soul which I have lost and on the Conscience 
which I have killed, I tell you that I cannot feel ! I am 
as the gods, knowing good and evil, but untouched by 
either. Is this enviable or is it not } ” 

When a man has lost the warning of “next morning’s 
head,” he must be in a bad state, I answered, looking 
at McIntosh on the blanket, with his hair over his eyes 
and his lips blue-white, that I did not think the insensi¬ 
bility good enough. 


284 


TO BE FILED FOR REFERENCE. 


“For pity’s sake, don’t say that! I tell you, it is good 
and most enviable. Think of my consolations ! ” 

“Have you so many, then, McIntosh? ” 

“ Certainly ; your attempts at sarcasm which is 
essentially the weapon of a cultured man, are crude. 
First, my attainments, my classical and literary knowl¬ 
edge, blurred, perhaps, by immoderate drinking—which 
reminds me that before my soul went to the Gods last 
night, I sold the Pickering Horace you so kindly lent 
me. Ditta Mull the clothesman has it. It fetched ten 
annas, and may be redeemed for a rupee—but still in¬ 
finitely superior to yours. Secondly, the abiding affec¬ 
tion of Mrs. McIntosh, best of wives. Thirdly, a monu¬ 
ment, more enduring than brass, which I have built up 
in the seven years of my degradation.” 

He stopped here, and crawled across the room for a 
drink of water. He was very shaky and sick. 

He referred several times to his “treasure’’—some 
great possession that he owned—but I held this to be 
the raving of drink. He was as poor and as proud 
as he could be. His manner was not pleasant, but he 
knew enough about the natives, among whom seven 
years of his life had been spent, to make his acquaint¬ 
ance worth having. He used actually to laugh at Strick¬ 
land as an ignorant man—“ignorant West and East” 
—he said. His boast was, first, that he was an Oxford 
Man of rare and shining parts, which may or may not 
have been true—I did not know enough to check his 
statements—and, secondly, that he “had his hand on 
the pulse of native life ”—which was a fact. As an Ox¬ 
ford man, he struck me as a prig : he was always throw¬ 
ing his education about. As a Mahommedan faquir — 
as McIntosh Jellaludin—he was all that I wanted for my 
own ends. He smoked several pounds of my tobacco, 


TO BE FILED FOR REFERENCE, 285 

and taught me several ounces of things worth knowing; 
but he would never accept any gifts, not even when the 
cold weather came, and gripped the poor thin chest 
under the poor thin alpaca-coat. He grew very angry, 
and said that I had insulted him, and that he was not 
going into hospital. He had lived like a beast and he 
would die rationally, like a man. 

As a matter of fact, he died of pneumonia ; and on the 
night of his death sent over a grubby note asking me to 
come and help him to die. 

The native woman was weeping by the side of the 
bed. McIntosh, wrapped in a cotton cloth, was too 
weak to resent a fur coat being thrown over him. He 
v/as very active as far as his mind was concerned, and 
his eyes were blazing. When he had abused the Doc¬ 
tor who came with me, so foully that the indignant old 
fellow left, he cursed me for a few minutes and calmed 
down. 

Then he told his wife to fetch out “The Book” from 
a hole in the wall. She brought out a big bundle, wrapped 
in the tail of a petticoat, of old sheets of miscellaneous 
note-paper, all numbered and covered with fine cramped 
writing. McIntosh ploughed his hand through the rub¬ 
bish and stirred it up lovingly. 

“ This,” he said, “ is my work—the Book of McIntosh 
Jellaludin, showing what he saw and how he lived, and 
what befell him and others ; being also an account of 
the life and sins and death of Mother Maturin. What 
Mirza Murad Ali Beg’s book is to all other books on 
native life, will my work be to Mirza Murad Ali Beg’s! ” 

This, as will be conceded by any one who knows 
Mirza Murad Ali Beg’s book, was a sweeping state¬ 
ment. The papers did not look specially valuable ; 


286 TO BE FILED FOR REFERENCE. 

but McIntosh handled them as if they were currency- 
notes. Then said he slowly :— 

‘Mn despite the many weaknesses of your education, 
you have been good to me. I will speak of your 
tobacco when I reach the Gods. I owe you much 
thanks for many kindnesses. But 1 abominate indebted¬ 
ness. For this reason I bequeath to you now the 
monument more enduring than brass—my one book— 
rude and imperfect in parts, but oh how rare in others ! 

I wonder if you will understand it. It is a gift more 
honorable than . . . Bah! where is my brain ram¬ 
bling to.? You will mutilate it horribly. You will knock 
out the gems you call ‘ Latin quotations,’ you Philistine, 
and you will butcher the style to carve into your own 
jerky jargon ; but you cannot destroy the whole of it. 

I bequeath it to you. Ethel . . . My brain again ! . . 
Mrs. McIntosh, bear Avitness that I give the Sahib all 
these papers. They would be of no use to you, Heart 
of my Heart ; and I lay it upon you,” he turned to 
me here, 'Ghat you do not let my book die in its pres¬ 
ent form. It is yours unconditionally—the story of 
McIntosh Jellaludin, which is not the story of Mc¬ 
Intosh Jellaludin, but of a greater man than he, and ot 
afar greater woman. Listen now! I am neither mad 
nor drunk I That book will make you famous.” 

I said, "thank you,” as the native woman put the 
bundle into my arms. 

" My only baby ! ” said McIntosh with a smile. He 
was sinking fast, but he continued to talk as long as 
breath remained. I waited for the end : knowing that, 
in six cases out of ten the dying man calls for his 
mother. He turned on his side and said :— 

"Say how it came into your possession. No one 
will believe you, but my name, at least, will live. You 


TO BE PILED FOR REFERENCE. 287 

'vill treat it brutally, I know you will. Some of it 
must go ; the public are fools and prudish fools. I was 
their servant once. But do your mangling gently— 
very gently. It is a great work, and I have paid for it 
in seven years’ damnation.” 

His voice stopped for ten or twelve breaths, and then 
he began mumbling a prayer of some kind in Greek. 
The native woman cried very bitterly. Lastly, he rose 
in bed and said, as loudly as slowly :—“ Not guilty, my 
Lord! ” 

Then he fell back, and the stupor held him till he 
died. The native woman ran into the Serai among 
the horses and screamed and beat her breasts ; for she 
had loved him. 

Perhaps his last sentence in life told what McIntosh 
had once gone through; but, saving the big bundle of 
old sheets in the cloth, there was nothing in his room 
to say who or what he had been. 

The papers were in a hopeless muddle. 

Strickland helped me to sort them, and he said that 
the writer was either an extreme liar or a most wonder¬ 
ful person. He thought the former. One of these 
days, you may be able to judge for yourselves. The 
bundle needed much expurgation and was full of Greek 
nonsense, at the head of the chapters, which has all been 
cut out. 

If the thing is ever published, some one may perhaps 
remember this story, now printed as a safeguard to 
prove that McIntosh Jellaludin and not I myself wrote 
the Book of Mother Maturin. 

I don’t want the Giant’s Rohe to come true in my 


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